How do you know a property is right?

[propertydilemma]

I'm having a dilemma. We've put an offer on a house and it's been accepted. However, I seem to have a bit of a niggling doubt and I'm not sure why. The house itself ticks almost all our boxes and it's in a great location for an outstanding school. We are relocating to a new area. How do you know when a house is the right one? Did you just know or was it a combination of location and the house? My DH is being very open-minded and has said we can pull the plug if I'm not sure but we've been looking for ages. WWYD?

If it was a niggle about the house itself, I'd look past it - but a biggie about the location is a much bigger deal, I think. To me the most important thing about moving is getting the right location. Almost everything else can be fixed. If you're not excited about where you're going to be, it's the wrong place for you. (Voice of bitter experience who wishes someone had given me the same warning.)

Biggie? Niggle!

I agree about location. I had an offer accepted on a house. I had only looked through the windows. It was perfect and the sea view sealed the deal. You can do a lot to make it your own, but if you're not sold on the location, it might grate long-term.

I guess when we first started looking I thought we'd probably be in a village somewhere - one that was a commutable distance to London (as DH needs to commute - as will I once the children go to school) but then we worried that we would end up spending our entire time in a car ferrying the kids around so we looked in some slightly bigger towns.

@tabardtherapist I keep looking at pictures of the house and it is lovely but something is niggling me and I'm not quite sure what!!

I like the idea of running through a day in the life of your family in that house. Where do they sleep? Way breakfast? Keep school bags etc. How do you get to where you all go? Shopping? Taking a walk.

Shut your eyes and do this. What did it feel like from this house?

If you are relocating to an area you don't know, I highly advise renting for a few months - we nearly bought from afar and the sale fell through (no fault of ours) we had a lucky escape, that large house on a new friendly family oriented development ends up being full of teenagers terrorising those in the sheltered flats and the school (brand new when we viewed) is failing, on its 5th or 6th head in 10 years. Due to the sale falling through and needing to be here we rented and found a great neighbourhood

@2018SoFarSoGreat that's a good idea thank you.

What if the niggle is about price?

@stucknoue good point. We did consider that but renting is just ridiculously expensive. Although I guess for the short term, if the new location is right for us then we'd save ourselves a lot.

@mum2015 I'm happy with the price. We've actually got it for less than asking which is good for us.

We decided on our current house within minutes of walking in. We went to the french doors overlooking the garden and both immediately thought of our grandchildren playing out there.

When I was telling my daughter in law about it she asked if I knew where I would put my Christmas Tree! I did know, and that was that.

We have been here 11 years this year and have never regretted it, even though our grandchildren are too big to play ion the garden these days

I wish I'd listened to my heart. I liked the house, school , but the location is so sterile. If you are having enough doubts to post here that should tell you something. It's too big a step and too expensive to move again. Renting for a bit is what I wished I'd done now!