Extend or move?

[SarfE4sticated]

Hi there, please help, can't decide what to do.
We have a ground floor flat in a good area of London, we have £100k more to pay before we've paid it off, and are in our mid forties. We have about £320k worth of equity.
Our flat is too small for us, so we have the following choices:

1. Extend over the side return and into 3m of the garden, giving us much more room (apparently the extension will cost about £80k which we will have to finance by remortgaging)
2. Sell and move to a cheaper area, and buy a house for around £450k.

I don't think we'll have time to pay either of the off, but we could then sell up and move out of London when we retire.

SO - it is better to extend our current place, or should we save ourselves the cost/hassle and just buy a a bigger place in a less desirable area...

THANKS in advance :D

Do you want to stay in the area you are? If so then extend. If you're happy to move away then do that.

That's basically what your decision (and affordability) should be base on.

As someone who is currently selling and leaving the UK I would only sell if I had to, it's a freaking nightmare!

Sorry to hear that Lego these are unnerving times aren't they.

I'm just worried about over-investing in a flat that will only ever be worth so much (and we may never be able to pay it off) when we could have a cheaper bigger house that we could pay off. Hmmm.

Hope everything works out for you

also, work out how much it would cost to sell and buy a house. stamp duty on a house of £450k is £12.5k plus the cost of selling, buying and moving. deduct that from the cost of the extension to getter a better comparison. comes down to whether you want to stay in the current location