How did you decide where to live?

[PaintingOwls]

I'm losing my mind trying to find a house to buy.

In theory we would live anywhere, so it's like having too much choice and it's coming up to a year that we've been looking. Tried (unsuccessfully) to buy 4 separate houses along the way.

The market seems really sluggish at the moment and I'm just not seeing anything new or anything that I like the look of. A few things "would do" but ultimately I don't want to buy a house I don't like. We can't afford to buy where we are currently renting, so it'll be a new area, wherever it will end up being.

Our tenancy is coming up to an end so we have to extend for another year or move.

We did a list of places which are important for us and looked at travel distances, also did a list what’s important for us in the house. Thus we identified an area for looking. We went beyond this area a little bit but we liked the house.
I think it’s true that the market is very quiet at the moment. You probably will need to extend your tenancy anyway as finding the right house is just the beginning, you might need to wait quite a while if it’s a chain.

We looked long and hard at where the most of our active time was spent, how much time we could afford towards commuting, and how much square footage we could get for our dollar.

We wrote down a list of what we wanted in the area (e.g. Commute, schools, local amenities, access to London/countryside/beach etc).

That narrowed it down to several places. We then looked at the housing stock available and picked the best value for money area that fit the bill + offered the house we wanted.