Would you rather live in a nice, normal house or a big, expensive one?

[BoogleMcGroogle]

We are currently deciding whether to 'upgrade'. Our house is fine, it makes me happy being there, we have a tiny mortgage and can afford to save well, travel with the kids and generally do nice things. Our house will never be Country Living magazine, but it's sunny, spacious and feels like home. We can ( after years of dreaming) finally afford the smart, Farrow and Balled period doodah, and now ( having found one that's perfect on paper) I'm having a wobble. I'm now not sure it's worth sacrificing the financial freedom for a couple of character fireplaces and some big, potentially problematic trees. Any thoughts?

I would love a big fancy house, but realistically I would only move if we were overcrowded or had issues with our home. Or if we won the lotto and money and lifestyle was no issue.

100% a nice normal house with less financial tie up's

in fact we moved last year & were offered a mortgage for double the amount than we wanted so could have got a far larger house but double the house means double the cleaning at the end of the day!

We have decided to stay where we are after trying to decide over the same thing. Our home is a “normal” 3 bed semi, but we we’ve done a lot to it and it feels like home (we’ve extended to include huge kitchen diner and also redone the bathroom). My mum passed away recently and as an only child I’ve inherited her house, it gives us enough to pay off our mortgage and some left over. We toyed with the idea of moving somewhere much larger, more “country” (we live quite rurally as it is) and so on but really what would it bring to our lives except more heating bills, more housework and more stress moving etc? So we’ve decided to stay where we are, pay off the mortgage and spend the extra money on holidays. Planning a luxury trip to New York and then a beach holiday. Kids will have good memories from those things.

My opinion is as long as your house meets the needs of your family and your happy in it then that's what matters.

Why would you throw away the freedom of a disposable income and holidays and the ability to actually enjoy life and te opportunity to save towards other things that you otherwise couldn't even have on your radar as something to want! just so you can pour it all into a bigger house where you are stuck with no money to enjoy things but you have a bigger livingroom to watch tv or extra space for a bookshelf which is lucky because your stuck there!

I'd always rather live in a normal, manageable sized house.

I just think of the heating bills, the extra cleaning, the extra furniture we'd need to buy, the extra room that no-one would be physically using, plus the extra interest on the bigger mortgage.

Me and DP could easily afford a house three times the value and size of the one we live in now but I wouldn't move - I just don't see the point.

I always think massive houses are a bit showy kind of 1980s "loadsa money" type vibe.

When we were house hunting, I had a wobble on a house that on paper ticked all the boxes. I was very worried about finances primarily, and the impact on our lifestyle.

The house we're buying is actually 50k more, but I haven't had the financial wobble. I think because this house is definitely the right one, the money aspect hasn't bothered me so much!

I would only get a big, grand property if I could afford a cleaner and gardener to help, otherwise it would just be one long series of chores.

Sounds like you have a great lifestyle OP - if you have spare cash I'd invest it rather than stretch yourselves.

I have seen my mother live in everything from a 2 bed council flat to a 4 bed semi to a 6 bed massive fancy house to a rural cottage and Iv never seen her more happy than in a detached 3 bed bungalow with "just" enough garden.

The big house although lovely just caused pressures, money to heat, grounds to maintain, rooms to keep looking ok, hours to clean and on and on!

As children have left she has sized her home to just bigger than she needs (to have a sewing room) everything just looks easier, her life just seems uncomplicated now, her biggest housing issue was finding someone to fix the trellis in her garden!

It depends really doesn't it. We all have different ideas of what big and expensive is. The main questions are, do you need to? and do you want to - really do you want to?
Are there things about your current house that have been bugging you that maybe aren't major, but you'd like to upgrade? Is it the 'look' of the new house thats tempting you. Do you really have any need for more space? Or will it just create more cleaning?
Or are you totally happy and just considering the upgrade simply because you can?

For instance, we just took out a new mortgage, taking us into debt for an extra 10 years. There was nothing essentially wrong with our old house. It was fine. I didn't love it. It was a house. We lived in it.
(I'm not saying our new house is big and expensive because like I said that's relative, but its bigger and more expensive and pushes us to the max)
Our list of would like but not essential but lets do it whilst the kids are still young(ish)
:
Bigger garage and side by side parking
Double bedrooms for both kids
Extra Bathroom for kids
Bigger Hallway
Kitchen we can fit a dining table in
Extra room I can use as a sewing room (yeah ok this was high up on my personal list)
Lighter brighter house
Ability to fit the tumble dryer indoors (so fed up of traipsing to the garage)
Playroom
No conservatory

These are things we wanted, and things we now have, and it makes our day to day life easier. That is what made it worth it for us. I had no attachment to my previous home. It was simply the house we lived in.

It doesn't sound like you really want to go!

It definitely depends on loving the big house for more than the magazine lifestyle.
We have a big Victorian villa with grounds - it's a labour of love. It takes continual money, time and compromise but we love it.
I love it for the space and the gardens. For me it's not a bit of character and a few fireplaces its the whole package that makes it our home.
We bought it for us and our family rather than what others thought though. We bought it and spent 2yrs doing it up. We moved for work and went bigger to expand our family. This is our 'forever family' home. We knew it would take money and regular upkeep and we planned for this.

Why are you planning on moving? It doesn't sound like you have solid reasons. If you don't need more space, don't need to relocate and love your house I'm unsure why you are moving.

What do you class as a big house though? We have recently moved into a substantially bigger house than we had previously (small 3 bed Victorian cottage type thing) but we're in London, and I think that the bigger place that we are now in is probably just a standard family type home in other parts of the country.

Depends what you mean by normal or large? I have a spare room, an office and two distinct living rooms (one open plan to dining, one separated) so large by some peoples living arrangements but small by others

@stucknoue that's basically exactly what we have now. It feels enormous and overwhelmed compared to what we were in before.

We moved to a house with a big open plan kitchen space that includes a seating and dining area and bifold doors to the garden. It’s transformed our lives. It’s a pleasure just to get up every day and have breakfast in such a lovely room looking out at the garden. If you have the chance to move to a nicer house I’d take it.

Thank you all so much for your answers. It's really helped me to clarify my thinking.

Last night I was sorting through some stuff and came across the Western Australia Rough Guide which I bought with a view to us all visiting my best friend next year. If we buy this house, that money ( not to mention the time) will be going on plumbing or sash window restoration, which somehow fills me with much less excitement. The house won't impoverish us, but we will have to reign in the spending ( it's not really on stuff, I don't care about status symbols). I guess that's what it comes down to- the money can only be spent (or saved) once and so it needs to be used for the things that make you happiest (or saved, DH does love a savings spreadsheet).

We have a lovely happy life now and, while we work hard, we know that one of us could take our foot off the gas if we needed to.

There's a lot to be said for a freer and simpler life, isn't there?

Happy is she who knows when she has enough.

@BoogleMcGroogle I definitely think there is a huge benefit to a simpler life. I think ultimately it depends on whether other factors also need changing. So for us, we loved the small house and the area. But knew we would all start to feel pretty cramped quite soon (2 small kids). We could have stayed there but in-laws have to sleep on a blow up mattress (they're getting older etc), I work from home, we wanted a marginally less urban environment for the kids etc. So there were many factors that contributed to us "upgrading". I think had we not been dealing with the above issues we would have stayed in our smaller house.

Sounds like you have a good set up at the moment.
I wouldn’t move to a big house unless you have pots of money for maintenance, bills, and help with upkeep of the house and garden, plus can still do the nice extras you do now.
Other things to remember about having an unusually big house is that:

• visiting tradesmen often quote much more
• socially it can be a bit weird and people can treat you differently/think you’re a ‘snob’ or whatever
• you can be more vulnerable to burglary
• people make assumptions about your financial position

We have always chosen houses with low or no mortgage to have financial freedom.

Went to Australia last summer at it was amazing, would choose that over a posh big house.

Surely it just depends on how you define a normal house and a big house? We have a new-ish four bed in the South East with four/five reception rooms downstairs, and a medium garden (with smallish trees - they're around 20 years old) which I think is on the fairly nice side of normal. But someone in a bedsit or a one bed flat might call that a massive house!

At the moment we have about 40% equity in this house so we could "upgrade" but to be honest I wouldn't as it's big enough for us. But if I were in a smaller house, I think I'd want to stretch to afford our home.

Nice, normal house. Although it would be nice if all the rooms were a bit bigger, and there was more storage, to me it’s not worth the extra money, even though we could afford it. I would rather pay the mortgage off a bit earlier and have fewer outgoings now.

Doesn’t stop me looking at naice houses on rightmove though!

Nice and normal here.
We’ve really outgrown our little house with having children, but they have a room each and room to play.
Mortgage will come to an end in the next 8 years, it’s tiny. Bills are affordable and we love holidays.
So for that reason, I would not go bigger and grander.
We live within our means comfortably.

I am the opposite. We have a fairly large 5 bed house (not esp swanky/luxury) larger than we need and i would love to downsize and have a smaller house, less rooms to clean , no mortgage and more money to spend on fun stuff or savd for uni fees.....but yet to convince DH!!