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Property/DIY

Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

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Original poster

Continue selling or convert

22 replies

Evecob · 10/02/2021 18:36

Husband and I are still torn on this and hope for some opinions please. Sorry for long post.

We sold our house last year but our purchase fell through towards the end. Our buyer was difficult regarding the sale so we had to pull out altogether. We were pretty upset about the whole thing.

Since then we have discussed a loft conversion. Reason for wanting to move was not location - we love where we are. School catchment, nursery, park in view from our house, friends nearby, village setting close to a city and all amenities we need BUT we have a 3 bed house, 3rd bedroom is a smallish box room. We currently have a 6 month old and a 2 year old who use the bedrooms, i would like our baby son to have a bigger room, and i would like a private place to work from home once off mat leave, as my job will be more home based than before and metric based ( working downstairs with kids around would be a nightmare, i did it in the first lockdown before mat leave)
I would also prefer a utility room and playroom for the kids downstairs which we cant have in this house, and our current garden is pretty small and NE facing, would prefer something a bit bigger.

The loft would solve a few of the main issues. Its within our budget for additional borrowing at 31K for a bedroom and stairs with storage to create a 4th bedroom. We can use our large landing for staircese alone. The company is reputable and can start in march, the room should be ready by june, perfect timing for me returning to work.

However we put our house back on market almost 2 weeks ago, had some interest but no offers yet. There is now nothing available on rightmove we like in our budget right now, so we could wait..but our outgoings will increase quite a bit by end of summer this year so to get a house in price bracket we want we need to find one in next 4 months or so. We are up with an online agent with fees you have to pay, due to pay them in august. So part of me feels like we should wait and continue selling. But what if we dont find anything we like in time.. what if we cant sell our house..

WWYD?

OP posts:

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 08:11

Bump

OP posts:

Persipan · 11/02/2021 08:35

I would probably lean towards staying put. However, one question, where do you end up having bedrooms in this scenario? Would you be putting one or more children on a different floor to yourselves, and is that workable?

sunshinesupermum · 11/02/2021 11:41

Stay put.

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 12:31

@Persipan

Not yet, if we went for the conversion, we would use the loft primarily as an office space for me/games area for husband and I.

Perhaps when babe was older we may give him the room and me use his room as office, but due to the small garden, no utility, no garage, and no playroom downstairs I wonder if I would just want to sell still after...dont get me wrong I like our house, but it doesnt quite meet our needs anymore..the area location we love.

I have linked the house..if this helps.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/77445771#/floorplan?activePlan=1

We have 2 viewings coming up tomorrow and monday.

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Pepperxo · 11/02/2021 14:50

Better than us I hate our location. We are probably staying put until the market calms stamp duty relief ends some of the asking prices are 20 percent higher than pre pandemic.

PresentingPercy · 11/02/2021 15:06

Is the roof space really capable of taking a proper room with full height? I’m not sure that’s a great conversion space. Is it a modern house with trussed rafters? Not ideal. Has anyone else done it on the estate?

Are you also spending money you won’t get back? Making the house too expensive for the location?

On balance I would sell. On line selling doesn’t help as some people hate buying like this. If you work in the loft, where will DCs play when you are working? With you in the loft? Or are you planning they go to nursery whilst you work?

We had a work area on our first floor. We hated it. Cut off from coffee!

I would get a much cheaper home office in your garden. It’s not that small. Gaming area sounds indulgent if away from the children. The bedrooms are ok for a while. Playrooms cut children off from family too. If I was going to do anything regarding the building I would take the house out into the garden to add space but not sure if that is worth the effort either.

So I would try and move.

lovemirage · 11/02/2021 16:07

We were in the same situation. We had plans for downstairs extension and loft conversion sorted. But then we saw a nice house about half a mile from us and put our offer in. The sale took ten months because we kept loosing our buyers. We have now much more space and we have possibility convert loft for move space if needed.

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 17:10

@lovemirage

Thanks for this, yeah I think it would be a no brainer if there were more properties up right now.

OP posts:

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 17:16

@PresentingPercy

Are you also spending money you won’t get back? Making the house too expensive for the location?

We had a work area on our first floor. We hated it. Cut off from coffee!

So I would try and move.

the loft would be used by me on sundays, DH would be downstairs with the kids, and a day during the week, when my mum would babysit the kids downstairs. I would probably still go into office some of the week on the days my kids go to nursery.

Unfortunately I dont know about trussed rafters... its a timber frame house with slate roofing built 5 years ago! thats the limit of my knowledge. The company said it would be a bedroom to building regs. unsure of design at this point as not agreed to the contract yet.

I really wanted to extend into the garden with a utility but the garden is only 6.5m by 9m, and with 2 kids i just dont feel extending into it is wise when it comes to reselling or to enjoy properly.

It's alot to think about but some of your perspectives has helped me. thank you,

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RoomOnTheDoor · 11/02/2021 17:29

Gosh I'm in a very similar boat, OP! Very interested to see the replies!!

We don't LOVE our house but we really like it, and love the location. It's affordable. We have outgrown it slightly but it ticks plenty of boxes, and extending would mostly sort the rest. But I really CBA with extending around young kids, and if it weren't for the long-winded stress and worry that comes with house-selling, we would definitely move on to somewhere that's already bigger and be excited to do so.

Personally we're finding that the "itch" is there now, and it probably will be unless we go for it and move. The thought already makes me go 🥵 Decisions, decisions! Maybe you could make a list of pros and cons?

CeibaTree · 11/02/2021 18:27

I'd stay put with the loft conversion for a couple of years if you are in your preferred school catchment and wait until you have a school place.

We were in the same dilemma a couple of years ago and we've decided to stay where we are until this September when we'll get a place at the school we want. For us because the catchment area is so small we will have a much wider choice of houses within our budget if we move up to half a mile from where we are now once we have the school place.

Sorry not sure if this has been mentioned but do you have room in your garden for an office there too?

PresentingPercy · 11/02/2021 18:59

Pix of trussed rafters. You can see the issue.

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 20:37

@CeibaTree

I'd stay put with the loft conversion for a couple of years if you are in your preferred school catchment and wait until you have a school place.

Sorry not sure if this has been mentioned but do you have room in your garden for an office there too?

I added our house link in one of my posts above, you can decide if you think there's room in the garden.. I feel like we would be eating too much into it. The garden is 9m long and 6.5m wide..

the school catchment is for secondary, our children are 6 months and 2.5 years old, not something i'm too worried about but ideally we want to move locally

OP posts:

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 20:38

@PresentingPercy

Pix of trussed rafters. You can see the issue.

I'm sure they can work around this style of roofing though? im probably being naive but not sure what the issue is!

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ireallyamthewalrus · 11/02/2021 20:46

So the loft conversion will cost £31k. How much more expensive would your ideal house be?

PresentingPercy · 11/02/2021 20:59

The loft conversion is expensive in my view. Yes I do think it’s possible to get round the roof construction but it’s possibly adding to the expense and the roof looks relatively shallow. Have you measured it?

JamMakingWannaBe · 11/02/2021 21:16

I'd get rid of your ensuite and put your office in there. That'll free up space in your living room for a play space for the kids. You won't get your utility room though. Your landing

JamMakingWannaBe · 11/02/2021 21:16

... seems big. What is in the cupboard there?

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 21:18

@ireallyamthewalrus

So the loft conversion will cost £31k. How much more expensive would your ideal house be?

The loft conversion would add about 130pm to our mortgage using additional borrowing.

The house we were supposed to be exchanging on in January was up for 315K (our max budget is slightly higher than this), we were porting our current mortgage and added an extra 100k or so on top, so our new mortgage total was going to add an extra 150pm (with the rate we secured with our broker back last year). Comparing the two based on that it seems like a no brainer, but there aren't any houses right now in our ideal location and just don't know how long we might have to wait.. or how long our house might take to sell!

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JamMakingWannaBe · 11/02/2021 21:20

There's an episode of "your home made perfect" where they turned the stairs 90 degrees and it made a massive difference to their upstairs space and the owner put in a utility. I'll try and find it. There's definitely scope to rework your upstairs. Maybe speak to an architect.

Original poster

Evecob · 11/02/2021 21:25

@JamMakingWannaBe

... seems big. What is in the cupboard there?

the landing is big, the storage cupboard there has the combi boiler and ok storage.

if we didn't do the extension and waited to move we were discussing putting a desk in the landing space but it wont give me privacy....or stick a desk in front of our bed instead of having the unit there, which will be cramped and not ideal but at least i will be able to close the door on everyone while working. We love the en-suite, keeps us separate form the kids bathroom so would want to keep that.

the loft conversion would have stairs access from the landing and we wanted under stair storage to maximise use of that space.

OP posts:

chukwe · 11/02/2021 21:39

I will definitely. We were in the same situation last year and decided to move. Best decision ever. No matter how big/huge the loft conversion is, the house footprint will always be small and you'll never be happy.

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