Extend or move?

[Noideaatall2020]

I guess this is a bit of a wwyd.

Give or take £10,000 it will cost us nearly the same to move and do up a house as it will to do a large extension.

We love the area here and have the best neighbours. Schools have outstanding ratings, but the house is too small. Gardens are a good size and there is plenty of parking. It's a semi- detached.

The extension would give us an extra bedroom, and ensuite , a study and a bigger family kitchen / diner than we have currently. We might have to move out whilst the work is done and probably wouldn't get all of the money back if we did decide to sell it.

The new house is quite a lot bigger and would give us everything we need in terms of bedrooms and a study. Kitchen/ diner etc. But the front garden is non existent and the back garden is not that great either. The house also needs a lot of work which we have budgeted for. It only has 2 car parking spaces. Schools in the area are rated the same as current area.

We just can't decide what would be the best long term for our family.

Has anybody else been in a similar situation? What did you decide to do?

We’re in a similar position, and have decided to move instead of putting ourselves through all the trauma of an extension. I’ve heard so many horror stories of living without kitchen/bathroom/wall on the back of the house etc. Plus we wouldn’t get our money back at all in our current house.

We’ve been lucky enough to find a new build we love, in the perfect area for us that gives us everything we need. Plus they will part exchange ours, so the stress levels are massively reduced. Although we still do have some issues trying to resolve the details before exchange so it’s not all been plain sailing

The questions I’d be asking in your situation are:

• how much do you/will you use the garden?
• how much parking do you need?
• how long are you planning on staying, and will your needs change in the future, with kids either coming along or growing up?
• what do the school catchment areas look like? (Our new build is actually just outside of the local, excellent primary school catchment, although we aren’t planning on moving ours out of their current school so it doesn’t matter to us)

Ours is our forever house, and we wanted to make sure we would have enough parking and house room for 4 adults to comfortably live (and potentially park!), which is another reason why the move.

I decided to go for an extension rather than the stress of moving....I guess you choose your poison! (I'm not moving out and no children which makes it easier hopefully).

When I can't make my mind up about two options I flip a coin, when the coin is in the air in general the answer I really want comes to me and I don't have to look at how the coin lands to know what I want to do.

Based on what you've written I think I'd improve.