Stay here, move to extend or wait for the dream house (which doesn't appear to exist)

[laurencellewelynbellend]

This is a terrible first world problem and my working class roots are thoroughly ashamed but I an doing my own head in thinking about moving house so thought I would share...
I live in a lovely 3 bed detached house, but ideally I would like a 4th bedroom, a kitchen diner (seperate galley kitchen currently) and a bigger garden. There isn't much scope to extend here as we are a bit limited by the plot and costs of extending are only likely to break even, not add value due to the ceiling price of the area. If we stayed we could manage here but its not ideal.

Property market round here has flatlined with very little coming up. What does is similar sized to what we have but tend to have bigger gardens as slightly older properties. Some have been extended but these are few and far between and you have to wait for someone to die or divorce...

We have seen a house valued similar to ours at a similar size that needs everything doing to it, plastering, rewiring, flooring, bathroom and we would want to extend. It has a massive garden so could easily take it.

Would you buy somewhere with a view to extending? Its not brilliant but livable but needs a lot spending on it. Not so worried about recouping the money as we would stay there at least 15 years until the kids are older.

Or would you wait until the right house came up thats already extended in the area and then go for that?

Help! I'm doing my own head in obsessively checking rightmove...

I should add I have been watching the property market for 18 months but have seen nothing suitable in the area/school catchments

It depends. Do you have funds to extend? We bought a house at the top of our budget which had been lived in by an old lady and needed everything doing. We did odd bits but only really had the money to extend / do everything we wanted for about 5 years and it was hard work living there whilst work was done (took about 8 months) with 3 children. We had the life we wanted (great neighbours, fab location, catchment for school etc) but quite draining / disappointing when the layout doesn't work for a young family or you're embarrassed about the decor and you can't afford to do anything about it.

Don't regret it because we couldn't have afforded a "ready done" version (and it's been financially worthwhile) but it would have been a much easier option.

Meant we had to wait 5 years before doing any work!

Thanks @namechanged, I think thats whats doing me in so much, we can afford to extend, but can we face living with it, and we can just afford to buy somewhere ready done if it came up. By afford to, I mean we are young enough to take on the extra years of mortgage it would take to pay it off. (Though with rising pension ages, social care costs etc I am wonder if its ever worth outright owning a house since you will probably have to sell it to fund your old age, by the time i retire at likely 70 my DH will be 77, we are unlikely to get any retirement together... but I digress...)

Hope you have the house you want now after all your work?!

Not sure there is such a thing as the perfect house. I would move and plan to extend. Then you get what you want. We moved to a house that was pretty untouched since the 70s. We did some work straight away( bathroom) but had to save up and wait to extend. Now we have a great house. We use the extension so much.
We still have lots to do to the house - but we aren't going anywhere forever!

I think if it was just an extension on the house you've seen, I'd consider it. But all the things you list and then an extension seems a bit too much.