Lost our dream home and can't get over it

[Strawberry83]

Hi Mumsnetters,

I'm a long-time lurker on this site but have decided to post on here as I don't feel I have anyone else I can turn to! I hope this is in the right section of the forum and apologies in advance for the long post.

Basically in December last year DH and I sold our small flat in London to move slightly further out (from zone 3 to 4). We've gone from a tiny one bedroom flat in a modern block to a semi-detached period house, with two/three bedrooms and a big garden (by London standards anyway).

The primary reason for making the move was that after nine years, we really wanted more space and a garden to enjoy in the summer months (our old place was very small and cramped, even for two people). We also wanted a freehold house with no service charges (one thing I don't miss about our old place was the 2.5k annual service charge ). We would like to have stayed in our old area ideally, which we loved, but couldn't afford much more space on our budget.

However, we've now been in our new house for a month and I'm really not settling. The house itself is nice but I miss our old area so much. The train station where we are now is only a few stops (12 minutes or so) down the line from our old area, but the house itself is a 20 minute walk to the station with no decent bus routes, which has left me feeling quite "cut off".

I'm sure some people will say that 20 minutes is nothing, but our old place was only a five minute walk to the nearest station, so relatively it's quite a difference. I also worry that it's harder for our friends to get to and that no one will come and visit us.

What's made me feel worse is that when we were looking to buy, we narrowly missed out on a beautiful house very near our old flat. It needed a complete renovation (I'm not sure you could even have lived there straightaway, as it was pretty much derelict) but it was a dream location.

There was a bidding war on it and we lowered our offer at the last minute as we were extremely worried that we wouldn't have the cash to do it up properly (and are complete novices at that sort of thing). We'd also have had to borrow a significant amount of cash from my parents to make it work, which although they did offer, I was loathe to do.

Since losing out on the dream house I've tried to put it out of my mind and make the best of things, assuming that it probably went for way over our budget anyway. However, I looked it up online the other day (big mistake) and discovered that it actually ended up selling for just 5k over what we bid. I'm now feeling completely devastated with regret as if we hadn't lowered our offer at the last minute, we would have been the winning bidders.

I'm trying to rationalise it by thinking that we may not have had the budget to fully do it up, even with the borrowing from my parents (which as I said, I really didn't want to do). There wasn't a chance to get a builder round for a viewing as with so many people interested, it went to best and final offers the evening we looked round. We therefore had to guesstimate what it would have cost us ourselves.

To make things even more pressurised, we were also pretty far down the line with buying our current house by the time the dream house came on the market, and were worried that if we'd switched properties at that point, we may have a) lost our very impatient buyers, b) lost our mortgage offer (I'm not sure the kitchen could be described as "working"!) and c) risked losing both properties and being back at square one.

However, I've been really sad since finding out the price it went for and have been feeling even more negative towards our new place as a result. I've tried talking to DH about it a few times but I think he's fed-up with hearing about it now. He says he was never especially keen on the dream house anyway, as although he loved the location, he was worried about the amount of work that needed doing and the potential cost.

Maybe it's my state of mind at the moment but I'm having a hard time believing him and am worrying he's just saying that to try and make me feel better. The house where we've ended up is pretty dated inside so will need a new kitchen and bathroom, although it's very much liveable in. I just can't help thinking that perhaps we would have had enough in the kitty to do up the dream house - and if we didn't, we'd have found a way to make it work somehow.

Sorry again for the long post and thank you in advance for any advice, words of wisdom or reality checks...! I do appreciate that we're very lucky to own our own home at all, especially with London prices being what they are.

Thanks ladies.

50k doesn't sound alot to me if it was near derelict. I guess in London you could have spent 15k easily on making it watertight. That's assuming there was no structural work required. Tbh it sounds like you have dodged a bullet.

That's a £75-100k refurb unless you were going to do lots of the work yourselves or have trades to do mates rates

You could bet your life that you'd have found lots more issues because a house left untouched for long enough to need all that has also been untouched in all the unseen areas and you're replacing floor joists and rewiring the whole place before you know it

Yes about 40-50k. That’s why it took so long to do! Most of it was the cheapest e.g. the most basic doors/handles from B&Q, the cheapest tiles etc, offcuts of cheap carpet for bedroom floors, cheap laminate for the floors. A lot of it didn’t look good after 7 years!

We were lucky that there were no problems with the roof, staircase, gardens, walls (only a small amount of plastering), wiring (except the fuse box), plumbing, radiators and kitchen. Well the kitchen was 20 years old but it was all fine and we just couldn’t stretch that little bit further.

The estate agent said about ten thousand was needed! The main problem was all the hidden stuff that you couldn’t see until you started to pull stuff out and down. It had been a rental for a few years and had suffered from a lot of neglect.

I would put your total at closer to £100k depending on the finish and quality of the products you wanted.

Honestly - and we're living in our 3rd doer upper and about to have it re-roofed, after the roof did give out the predicted 10 years after we bought it - you dodged a bullet.

We were not total novices (and had identified new boiler, new heating, new flooring, new bathrooms, total kitchen rebuild etc etc ourselves) but the full structural survey that revealed the need for full rewiring, a roof with only 10 years to go, and windows too dangerous to stand close to on a breezy day was still a bit of a wake-up call, though reading between the lines it did still say 'solid old place'.

Essentially, always double the number you first think of when renovating a house, and triple the hassle.

I'd agree on the £75-100k budget, especially in a place where trades are likely to cost.

I would also try to find something in your new area to join / do that will really tie you to that area - a club, a group, a new activity, a class - something that will give you a stake in, and friends / acquaintances within, the area you now live in.

Nobody ever underestimates the cost of a renovation!

I can empathise as we had a house that got away - the house itself was pretty much perfect for us space-wise and it didn't look as though it needed any work. For reasons too long-winded to go into but related to the vendors' purchase and our buyers, we ended up going for another house, though this one kept rearing its head. Oh, and shortly after we completed on the house we bought, I found that The One That Got Away had been bought by a friend of a friend .

I imagine that you bought your current house for a reason. Us too. Ours was slightly more of a head over heart purchase in some ways but the location is so much better, as is the garden.

Also, with kids, don't underestimate how nice it is to have space. We moved to a house from a flat with a toddler and having more space and a garden has made a huge difference to our quality of life overall.

Sounds daft but two things helped me: one was listing all the advantages of the place we bought (as well as making plans around colour schemes and so on), and the other was taking a walk past The One That Got Away and having a good hard look at it. That really helped - it was obvious that the house we actually bought was better built. We have no idea what that survey would have uncovered, and would have left ourselves very little contingency money had we gone ahead at the agreed price.

You bought the right house, you just need to take time to realise that, and mentally say goodbye to the other one. Making plans for your new home will help!

That's definitely looking at up to 100k to do it up. I imagine the price was low due to thr cost involved in renovating it.

Also I think there’s a reasonable chance that at the bidding stage you were outbid by more than £5K. Could easily be the sort of property were the price got subsequently renegotiated on mortgage valuation or when the winning bidder had the chance to get trades or surveyor in!

Easy 100k for what you have listed, Homes under the Hammer has a lot to answer for giving people totally unrealistic ideas of what a quality renovation actually costs. Also the house sounds unmortgageable to me, if it did not have a working kitchen or bathroom I thinks banks don’t lend unless you have a massive deposit to put down, so yes you could have “won” the bid but are you actually sure your bank would have given you the loan? You would have been even more gutted further down the line. Most people have experience of the one that got away, you will get over it, try and enjoy your new house it sounds lovely!

To echo the last poster, it sounds unmortgageable to me too, or else they would release the funds in lumps as you did each stage of the work. Move on! You have a lovely house now by the sound of it, forget about the other one, it wasn't meant to be. The stress of having a 'do-er upper', and not having the funds to do it cannot be overestimated, and you saying it was small - well, that would be no good really for the family you want to have.
I am a great believer in the saying 'what's for you, won't pass you by'. Make your current home your own and enjoy it.

I think it's really normal to feel unsettled in a new house. I bet loads of us on this forum have moved into a place, then had a wobble about whether it was "right" or not! Please do give it a bit more time - habits take a while to form, and it can be a few months before a new space feels like your home.

In terms of renovation, the grass is always greener, right? I understand what you're saying about the location of your old home, but honestly a renovation of that kind of scale is a huge undertaking, and often a total money pit. You need to have huge levels of contingency to pull it off quickly - or to accept living in a building site for months, even years, on end. Yes, the house might only have gone for £5k over your asking, but there is every chance that it would then have required £50k more work than you had realised.

As for the walk - honestly, 20 minutes isn't much. Do it regularly and you'll soon get to enjoy it! It's not that you've lost your old area, you're just a few minutes further away.

If it's that small and has no garden and you want a family it's definitely not your dream house. It's just in a location you love, as are many homes beyond yours and most people's pockets. It sounds like the compromise you've made - 20mins away - is small for the gains you've made. Probably you're mostly reeling from the life change and focusing that on the house. But you'll adjust in time and appreciate the benefits. Though of course it sucks to get older and not have made your fortune so you can live in your dream home, I totally feel you on that.

This applies not just to houses, but jobs, friendships, people hurting you. It feels so painful at the time and you can't understand how this could possibly be for the best but generally it really is and years later when you look back you will see this.

Try not to stress about it... it may not have worked out with dream house anyway. We have just bought a 'dream house' renovation. We are also novices and we also didn't have lots of money to throw at it so having to do most of the work ourselves and having to wait until pay day each month to throw some more money at it. It's quickly becoming our not so dream house! It's bloody hard work doing up your own home, especially with limited funds. I know it will be fantastic in the end but there is no way I'd do it again unless I had a cash sum to be able to get all the professionals in at once!

We bought a fixer upper 4.5years ago - it's been bloody hard work and I say that as someone who does this for a living as I'm an architect.
Living with your renovation work is so much more stressful than being to go home at the end of the day.
I actually wasn't convinced by this house even after we bought it. I hated the kitchen and even with my ability to visualise change I couldn't believe I'd ever love it. I now love it and I've managed to make it one of my favourite rooms. We moved from a fab position in the centre of a city with everything on the doorstep to a village in a different region (we had to move for work and location was specified by contract). It took me 6months or so for me to see the full positives of that move. I still miss our old location but I can also see the negatives I used to gloss over (crappy traffic and parking, noisy location, no outside space).
I have explored where we live and now know of positives I didn't know of before.
I was worried about friends visiting as we moved over an hour away but most have come (in summer the pull of a garden for bbqs is great), yep they don't pop over for a quick coffee but I've made new friends and they do that instead.

I'm also guessing 100k up

I reckon you wouldn’t get much change from 75k for that list.

I reckon you would be looking at at least 100k+ for a house needing total renovation in London. Issues always crop up that you weren't expecting and end up costing you loads more.

So OP - try and put the other house out of your mind. You basically couldn't have afforded it if if you 'only' were expecting to spend £50k. How would you have afforded rent and mortgage whilst the major work was being done? How would you have had the time to manage a full renovation?

I did a similar move a year ago. From an super cool flat in an amazing zone 1 area.... to a nice enough house (with a small but beautiful South facing garden) in a but of a grubby zone 3 area. I too am only 12 mins on the tube my old location but its a 10 min walk to the station so its basically 35 mins to restaurants etc in my old area now where as it used to be a 5 min walk.

I miss living in a much nicer area, but frankly, I couldn't afford anything other than a 1 bed flat in a private block or a 2 bed ex-LA flat. And I made the decision that I wanted to secure my long term future in london and get a house with garden.

Was it the right decision? Who knows. I am happy enough.

I do miss both the flat and the area, and it was a big change in lifestyle. But overall after a year I feel happy.

However, if I won a mill on the lottery I would move back to my old area in a heart beat as I would be able to afford something nice!

Thank you so much everyone for the wonderful advice - you've really helped restore my sanity! It makes me feel much better that lots of people have said we'd be looking at £75-£100k for the refurb, as that would put the house way beyond our budget - we simply don't have that kind of cash.

FluffyWuffy - your situation sounds identical to mine! Like you, DH and I were just keen to secure something of a decent size (with outdoor space) in London before we were priced out of the city altogether. I've also found it to be a huge change in lifestyle (more so than I was expecting if I'm honest), but it's encouraging to hear that one year on, you're feeling happy with your move. I hope in 11 months' time I can say the same!

I do know a couple who are undertaking a full renovation - we are in the NW and 50k isn't going to touch the sides.
It's like a horrible pass the parcel. Every time they take off a layer they hold their breath until they find the 'surprise'.
It'll be 75k + and he does most of the work himself (he's in a trade).

We moved just over a year ago and we missed out on the most beautiful house by not putting our old house on the market in time. Having now spent a full year here, and seeing how much better our quality of life is with extra space and a garden I no longer hanker after the other house. Give it time.

Just read whole thread. In London you'd be doing well to do that kind of house up for £100k. Especially if you wanted naice tiles, fittings, flooring, kitchen etc rather than cheapest option everywhere. There's always things to add to the list - I bet it would have needed a full rewire for example, maybe new plumbing, boiler, possibly new CH, rotten joists here and there (if it needs a new roof and new windows there will be other things that haven't been cared for).

Also, if you're hoping to have children soon, you will be SO glad you have the space. Honestly. I can just imagine you having borrowed to the hilt, gone over budget, spent a year or two of major stress getting the building work done - and then realised you'd have to move in another year or two because it's too small for your active toddler plus bump.

Your current area sounds much more likely to have other families around too which is such a benefit once you do have DC.

Right decision, really!!

Could a fold up scooter help with the commute?

I have been having plastering work done over the last week and it is flat out awful. And it's the ONLY work that NEEDS doing. Think of the dusty bullets you have dodged!

Maureen - can't believe they're spending £75k-plus and doing most of the work themselves. It just goes to show how expensive it all is!

Minipie - thanks for taking the time to do that! Yes it would definitely have needed new wiring I think - and the boiler looked in a really bad state. DH has been considering getting a fold-up bike. I need to get healthier this year so am trying to do the walk. I've been challenging myself to do it in the quickest time possible and have now got it down to 18 minutes front door to platform if I power walk the whole way

Strawberry it hasn't been touched since the 1950's.
Total rewire, central heating installed in 13 rooms (never had it), new roof, ceiling joists, chimney stacks are dangerous, new floor joists, floorboards, back to the brick re-plastering, dodgy staircase.
Damp, mild subsidence, cellar needs work, new windows, lean-to removing.
That's before you even get to the bathroom & kitchen and decorative stuff!

I agree with a previous poster who says the vendors may not have accepted the highest bid.

Our current home went to sealed bids. We offered asking price because did not think it was worth more than that. They chose us, despite us having one of the lowest offers, because we had a huge deposit. Not sure if that helps at all but worth bearing in mind.