I managed to save around £15K stamp duty. But, I pay £50K extra because of my mistake.

[JaniceEnglish]

I just brought a house in South East England, after we sell our apartment in London. I managed to save around £15K stamp duty. But, We pay £50K extra because of our mistake. We view the property online. After moved-in we found the roof leak. The boiler is not working well. The plumbers ask us to replace pipes in the wall as well. The pictures look lovely on the Zoopla. We don't have this issue with our apartment in London.

I feel regret now. And now, my company needs me to back to the office at least three days a week. And my husband needs to be back five days a week from September onward. The train fare is expensive.

We have a big garden. My husband asks me to do the gardening once a month because I can work from home two days a week, this makes me mad.

We might plan to move back to London and get a flat.

Does anyone fell into the same trap? Should I stay or move back to London.

I'd say wrong again @Whiskycav my company considered whether to allow employees to work remotely and from
a non London location but made clear in the consideration that the first thing they would do is remove London weighting from salaries. Would have required consultation with unions but our senior management were absolutely confident they would be able to do it. In the end they didn't go down the route of allowing fully remote
working on the basis of fairness and we are introducing hybrid as a pilot.

I've no answers apart from to tell you that I feel sorry for you and hope you can sort things out. Having recently bought and sold I know what an absolute nightmare it can be and one of my fears was buying the wrong house. Good luck.

So they had a business reason that could stand up to scrutiny.That's a legitimate reason for any business

It was very unsuccessful. That job was vacant for months, illustrating that there was absolutely no legitimate reason. They did it because they thought (wrongly) they could.

You cannot get your money back but you can sell it and move back to london.

I can see this happening more and more.

I thought I was brave stupid buying a 23 year old horsebox without a vehicle inspection report for £3k ... at least if it all went wrong I only lost £3k ...

@Kralia

Seriously? There's lack of planning, and then there's pathological failure to do the most basic of forward thinking. This sounds like the latter. A garden does tend to need gardening. If you move out of London but your jobs are still there, then trains are not free. Then there's this thing called a survey, which is specifically designed to flag up expensive building faults before you buy.

On the other hand, this might all be a load of total bollocks. I rather hope the latter!

Yes I rather think it’s the latter

OP i feel your pain, but i presume you should have known that you will back to the office at least on some days? Why dont you take your time and see how it goes? You have already made a decsision in a rushed way which you now seem to regret why make some rushed decisions again?

I your shoes I’d keep the big new house and either purchase the tiniest cheapest smallest studio flat in London you can find or find some cheap over night accommodation, maybe someone’s box room on Airbnb

Give it two years in your new house. Can I ask the reasons behind leaving London and the reasons for choosing this area and house. It’s really natural to have a period post house purchase in which you question your decision.

There's lack of planning, and then there's pathological failure to do the most basic of forward thinking.

I just really like this line; it's me in a nutshell. Thinking of getting it on a t-shirt.

Wow some people are really harsh. Im sure OP has regrets. Id suggest staying there for at least a year and see if you enjoy it. Maybe invest a bit of time and money into tje garden to make it low maintenance. Get rid of high maintenanxe plants and pave/gravel (if can afford to) or keep just grass so maintanence is cutting the grass only. Stay a year see how you feel (there may be another lockdown in autumn).

Yes, please go back to London. You're exactly the reason that local people like us are being priced out of the housing market. We nearly exchanged on a house last July. Vendors had to pull out due to illness and job change just before exchange. They just re-marketed the property 11 months later and it sold in less than 2 weeks for £200,000 more than our offer last year. It's madness. We've been trying to buy for a year and a half now, and can barely get a viewing because people are having offers accepted sight unseen.

I commute to my office in Central London. In normal times, it costs me £700 a month, plus parking and tube. Train fares have been historically low this past year. Idiots are making decisions about where to live thinking they will pay £20 return to London to go in twice a month. That's just not what it costs to live in the Southwest with a London job. So many people in for a shock when life gets back to normal.

I think this post might be a joke.

There’s a lot of unnecessary harshness here. I’d suggest that probably people who are settled where they are and are judging this OP have not themselves been under the pressure of inadequate housing or other unmet need over lockdown, causing them to move but doing so in a massively overheated and time pressured national market which has typically been great for sellers but not buyers.
The pandemic has affected us all in different ways. Also, buyer’s regret is really normal.
We just don’t know what pattern many or most employers can or will return to. Many of them have taken the opportunity to get rid of expensive central offices and will be enforcing an additional amount of WFH. Office based working won’t be dead forever but it may be only part of the mix with majority WFHing for lots of people. If we have an autumn lockdown because of hospital admissions going up, people who’ve bought quickly in the pandemic might feel happy that they made the jump. The turnover in the jobs market anecdotally seems higher than normal at the moment due to pandemic so OP or the DH might find work closer to home, or more flexible, or better paid. The pandemic is affecting every aspect of a lot of people’s lives, not just some parts in isolation so it’s hard to predict how we all will or should behave in response to it.

Unfortunately the media have whipped lots of people up into a frenzie that the world has changed and that there are fantastic opportunities to work remotely and have a huge house and garden whilst keeping their lucrative job in a big city! All driven by estate agents trying to ramp up property prices and covered in property pages of newspapers! The stamp duty holiday just made things worse. Sorry OP you have fallen victim to this. Yes, as already suggested, it may be worth trying to sell as the market is still quite hot and there are other people like you who may buy. Property law is ‘buyer beware’ and it is hard to do this with the pressure of a stamp duty deadline and restrictions on viewing.

Shame neither of you put any basic thought into such an extravagant purchase. Oh well.

I fear that given what we were hearing on other threads about buyers being wildly outbid by people from a distance who even hadn't seen the property that yours is not going to be an isolated case.

Perhaps if you give it a little time, things may settle down and you may find you like it and can make it work for you. If not, well, then you may need to sell and move back to the city. But whatever you do, could I suggest a few tips?

Always have a proper survey before you buy (not just a valuation). Especially as you're obviously not experienced when it comes to property maintenance etc. I'd suggest the equivalent of what used to be called a Homebuyer's Report, or a Full Structural- a surveyor should be able to explain the various types they do these days and suggest which would be best for you. Get them to do an independent valuation while they are at it if it's not included in the package you choose. Never rely on Zoopla valuations, they can be wildly out for all sorts of reasons, and can even be manipulated.
We're pretty experienced with property and minor renovations, but we still always have a survey-last time, we had a very detailed structural one even though we were pretty sure we'd spotted everything. It still picked up one or two issues, though minor ones, and was worth every penny if only for peace of mind.