How important is location v space ?

[quinquereme]

Trying to weigh this up. We could do with a little more room (had one more child that we had planned !). Have enough bedrooms and they currently share (in normal times we regularly have people staying), but it's more about living space. It's possible that we could extend, but complicated. Have been looking at moving and have realised we have an unusual location - we are last house on a no through road, so it's very quiet, our garden isn't materially overlooked and we have parking. But at the end of the road in 2-3 minutes walk is three bus routes in different directions, a great supermarket, hardware store, pharmacist, florist. Outside of this we are five minutes to a park ten minutes to cinema, pubs, restaurants. Basically I've been looking for hours over the past 18 months and nothing comes close. Are we hooked on convenience ? Has anyone moved from a great location for space and regretted it

We had this dilemma and stayed and built an extension - we inly had a small garden & now it's even smaller but we don't have kids so not an enormous issue for us.

As your children get older and don’t want to spend as much time with you, the more important space is. Lockdown has really brought that home to us how lucky we are to be able to all work separately without noise and getting in each other’s way. In normal times, we can also retreat down into the cellar or converted loft when our DD has sleepover friends rampaging around the house. It’s easy in a small space to really get on top of each other, particularly in the hormonal years. I wouldn’t buy somewhere i found really unappealing or in a bad school catchment just to get space ..but it really is a good thing to have!

An extension is the obvious way to go rather than move as it sounds like you love your house. If the extension isn’t going to make it aesthetically ugly (you say it would be on the front), you’ve got the budget and could handle living with a project, why sell somewhere you care about?

I would I think look in more detail at your local Secondary schools performance stats and how far they’ve gone out on offers though if you’ve not done so already. You say you are equi-distant, If you are going to be spend £££ then you don’t want to find out later on you’re borderline or out.

Tough one. We are in a very convenient and lovely location, but really could do with more space. Children are 8 and 10 so worried about everyone getting too big (physically) to stay here. But, at the end of the day I think I would be miserable anywhere else. Also, it will be good where we are when we have teenagers who want to go out in evenings etc. So for me, location over space.

I have a similar dilemma, really love the location of where i live but it's a flat so no outdoor space or garage type storage and if working from home is here to stay I'd like a separate office space. BUT to move in this area to something with those things would be close to double the value of my flat. But I don't think my wish / need for those things is enough to sacrifice so much on location. When you're used to things on your doorstep it's hard to give them up.

We have 4 kids, an amazing location I previously could have only dreamed of and a small house. We appreciate the location throughout each day and have minimal stuff so it works well.