Feel so Awful about my house

[ChristmasBerriesBez]

Hello Mumsnetters, I'm hoping someone is out there....awake and on here early.
I'm reaching out really - I feel so awful about this thing. We bought a house which i had fallen in love with and my logic was clouded so we offered way, way too much.

Now it's come that I feel sick every time I think of the house. I feel sick as I know that it will never sell at anything close to what we paid. Although we got it under asking, it's asking was ridiculously inflated and I'm talking we paid I think maybe £60,000 more than it's worth.
A lot of what we paid was out savings. so literally money no longer in the bank.

There have been comments about what we paid from people who live nearby and I could just melt into the ground.

It has very little resale potential - it's layout is majorly unusual and those who have looked at it's floor plan hate it and say they wouldn't consider it.
It had been listed for over a year, it had just had an offer fall through, and I know they were desperate to sell. North facing garden too!

I got it for 6 percent less than asking price, but now i've done my research (too late!) I can see that it's worth about 10-15 percent less.
Other houses in the area measure up much better.

I've gone from loving it to having bad dreams about it, I feel sick in my stomach all the time and I don't know how to live there without thinking every day '£60K wasted that I'll never see again'
We really need that money. It was top end of budget.

I don't want to decorate or work on it because it only makes me panic that it's more money wasted on it that I'll never see again.
I feel breathless when I think that this is it now...we're stuck in this house with no option to sell in future as it will only lose value as time goes on.
Dont know why I'm posting this really, I think to vent, or to reach out, or to ask how others might handle this. Thanks MNs
xoxoxo

Didn’t you post about this before? You’re fundamentally misunderstanding property sales! A house is ‘worth’ what someone will pay for it at a particular moment — an asking price is simply what an AE thinks it might sell for. There is no objective value, though if you have a mortgage, the lender must have valued it at what you paid. The neighbours’ opinion is irrelevant, unless they bought identical houses at exactly the same time. Why do you seem to be trotting around asking people what they think your house is worth and whether they think the floor plan is difficult? Again, irrelevant unless you’re trying to sell now.

Even if it has its oddities, it will sell to someone, even if it takes longer. Friends of ours own a listed 17thc house in the village where we lived in a nice, plain 1970s red brick — they acknowledge it’s not for everyone, and that when they sell, it will only appeal to a minority of buyers, but they bought it to live in and bring up their children in.

Yes I’m wondering if the op posted about this before too.

Could it be that your near neighbour’s comments about what you paid for the property are simply expressing astonishment at how house prices have risen? I doubt they’re saying that you’ve paid over the odds for it.

If you have a mortgage on the property the lenders will have carried out a valuation as they wouldn’t lend on a property massively overpriced.

You need to get on with enjoying your new home and making it your own.

@Unsure33

You are totally looking at this the wrong way. A house is worth what someone wants to pay for it at that point in time . Trust me over the years we have been through recessions and negative equity and made money on houses as well . It Does NOT matter what’s it’s worth now. It does not matter what other people think . It only matters when you come to sell.

We had a similar thing with our last house. Everyone said we overpaid , it would be a money pit , etc etc . We just sold for way over asking price.

Just relax , love your house , and don’t worry about the price because no one can predict what will happen over the next few years .

Honestly just forget about the future and enjoy the house.

This. I mean this nicely but give your head a huge wobble and ignore the opinions of others. As someone said further up this thread, it can be a natural reaction to spending a HUGE amount of money to have fear/depression/anxiety. When we bought our first house we loved it when we viewed, then we moved in and DH noticed that the sewage plant could be seen over the nearby fields. For the first few months we lived there, he SWORE that no one would ever want to buy our house on account of the sewage plant and that we had thrown the money away. When it came to sell, we had actually DOUBLED our money over some 5 years. Being critical/dismissive of houses and saying that they aren't worth what they sold for is kind of a game....I do it myself on youmove and so on but its really rude to do it to the purchaser's face. If its your "friends" or relis doing it then tell them to shut the eff up.

The downstairs sounds lovely. Live in it for a bit before you make any changes.
I remember having this same panic and regret when I first bought my house. I loved it straight away, paid the asking price. House prices remained stagnant for a longtime after that and I worried we had been ripped off.
We had to replace kitchen and bathroom. After about 15 years we have totally remodelled the layout downstairs and it’s amazing, we love it and will probably never move again. And now house prices have gone silly again we would be in profit if we were to sell.

I’d stop listening to busy bodies and get the house to how you want it but maybe no major work to start with

My house value has gone up £100k in 4 years. Honestly, enjoy your home and anyone saying anything negative should get the reply “I love it”. People had so many opinions about my last house - 3 storey town house that I loved. They’d comment on it being small. It was big enough for us! We did outgrow it but if finances hadn’t allowed us to move we would have happily stayed. Ignore people is the best advice.

@YourenutsmiLord

A north facing garden usually means a south facing house with lots of warm sunshine flooding in.

We live in one of these. We get blinding sun in the lounge all day long. The back of the house, which sees no sun is always chilly. It doesn’t stop me loving the house but I’m not sure I’d buy a south facing house again.

I quite like unusual layouts, and I would kill for wide hallways. I have cursed this ‘narrow house’ many times, and went through a stage of hating it because everything is in the way. I spend more time with a tape measure than with my DP.

But since we’ve started work on it, and started making the spaces work, I’m coming round to it and not focusing on the negatives (as much). You may find the same. It took me a while to mentally get into the mood to do up this house, and I wish I had started sooner so I could have spent less time stressing about it.

We’ve also ended up paying twice for some jobs, because they weren’t done correctly in the first place.

I will probably end up spending more than it will eventually go for, but the way I see it, I may not even be in a position to sell for a long time for whatever reason. I may as well pay (extra in some cases) and enjoy it, not focus on potential losses in 10+ years time.

A small bedroom is quite standard in a lot of houses (I know on MN plenty say it would put them off buying a house, but in real life houses with one of the rooms being a box room sell every day).

Do you need to use all of the rooms as bedrooms, or are any of the other bedrooms big enough to divide in to 2 and use the box as storage? Or even knock it through into the next bedroom and reconfigure the space that way?

Either way, you have options and you can find some ideas to suit what you need. I’ve seen some threads on MN where posters have had bed frames built to suit the box room (i.e taken out the over-stairs cupboard if there is one, and built over that).

As hard as it is, I would mostly ignore others opinions on it, unless they also live there. Listening to others opinions when I bought this house cost me a lot of time and money!

Who cares what anyone else thinks. If the location works for you have good neighbours (worth their weight in gold) and the inside of the house works for you, sounds like a great move. Start decorating and get it to your taste. You will have to let go of the fact you overpaid, if you are looking to stay for a good while it wont matter. Maybe you could slightly overpay the mortgage every month to pay that off a bit sooner, might help you feel a little more financially better off?

I had to sell my first home in the property crash of the 1990s. I lost a third of the value. My current home is worth 3x what I paid for it. Its irrelevant really, I'm not selling, everything around me has gone up but the most important thing is it's my home.
I think you need to stop thinking about it as an investment opportunity and about it as your home.
Its paid for and done. Stop showing people floor plans and talking about the price. Start taking about your new home. I'd love wide hallways, a tiny bedroom could be a walk in wardrobe, office etc etc. How will you make it yours.
Stop worrying about what may or may not happen in 5 or 10 years.
Good luck and enjoy your lovely new home

Prices fluctuate all the time and there are winners and losers in that. Don't worry if it's a longterm home, as all property goes up eventually!

Ignore others' comments, chances are you wouldn't want THEIR homes so don't place too much importance in their opinion. Also, most people aren't in the recent nutty housing market race and would probably be shocked at all sorts of selling prices!

It's always sickening to think you might have overpaid for something but ask yourself - if you were still blissfully unaware of this, would you feel bad about the house? If the answer is no then forget it. It's done now and you paid what you did because you loved it, and could afford to. What has really changed for you?

If inflation continues at the present rate the value of your house in numbers will soon increase and your investment is more likely to keep pace with inflation if it's sunk in property than if it's languishing in the bank earning very little interest.

I was told I was overpaying for my house when I bought it, even by my solicitor. Now, years later, people can hardly believe it was so cheap.

My north-east facing back garden is lovely for a morning cup of coffee.

The spacious hall and open plan kitchen diner are my favourite features of the house. The hall gets no natural light but now looks lovely with fresh light decor. The kitchen doesn't get much sun but I love it and spend much of the day in it.

You loved the house at one point. It's time to stop panicking and make it a home.

Every house is a compromise. I'm sure if I had millions and designed my own I'd still find things less than perfect.

Please don’t worry about then odd layout, we bought a house with an unusual layout and I spent pretty much the whole 5 years living there thinking we’d have a terrible time selling and who would buy this house etc. forgetting of course that I liked it so why wouldn’t someone else! In the end the house sold after a grand total of 3 days on the market so I spent 5 years worrying about nothing 😂 if you liked the house then it’s nobody else’s business what you paid for it!

Have you posted about this before, OP, because it sounds awfully familar?

If it wasn't worth the valuation, you wouldn't have got a mortgage on it. This sounds more like an issue with your anxiety than the house, so it's time to stop constantly circling around the purchase price and get on with enjoying your lovely new home

We live in a historic property that we bought cheaply but needed an insane amount of money spending to make it habitable. After 20 years we are just about at the point where we might get our money back if we decided to sell - but the point is, we've had a lot of pleasure from living here and we decided to look on the costs as just that, i.e. a kind of pleasure payment. You said that the value of your house will go down, but in the long term that just doesn't happen in the property market. Prices always rise in the end. Just ignore the neighbours and get on with finding pleasure in your new home. Time will be on your side.

I think you posted about this about a month or so ago.

I think this is all about anxiety and not about the house. You are lying awake at night worrying about a house that you paid 6% under asking. Nowhere is going for 10-15% less than asking right now, the market has risen 10! Your worries are irrational and likely related to anxiety about moving, life and so on.

Have you shared your worries with a good friend, your partner, do you have kids? I think talking about this openly might lessen the anxiety. I also wonder if you are anxious/depressed anyway- does that ring any bells.

Your thought processes around this are fixed and catastrophic, whereas in reality you bought a house under asking price in a highly competitive market.

If you hate the house that's different, but I don't get the impression you do, it seems you like it but are spiralling with worries about what others said (I'm guessing you point out the flaws to them and then they agree to be polite and then you get upset) and staying awake at night.

Perhaps have a think what this is really all about. What's driving this anxiety (and don't say overpaying cos to be honest, you probably didn't overpay and even if you did, you are living there so it is a valuable asset to you)? What's going on? What solutions do you see?

I'd be interested to know where the op got the 60k figure from.

We also overpaid but the house has caught up in value now a few years later. We also completely changed the layout to make it ours - increasing the value along the way.
Just accept you overpaid but that that doesn’t matter in the long run as it will increase in value. And change whatever layout doesn’t work?
I think you’re being way too negative.

@lurkingattheback

If you love the house and aren't planning to sell anytime soon then forget what you paid. Live and love the house. Slowly decorate and make it your own.

This 100 percent

Who cares what other people think about it? You fell in love with it. Embrace the quirkiness, make it a lovely home. Don't worry about reselling it. Enjoy as a home.

I love interesting quirky houses.

I felt a little like this with our first home, that on paper it didn't appeal but when we looked at it ( we only did due to it being close to another one we were viewing so thought we might as well at the same time, I ended up loving it despite its awkward bits as it just had something about that I liked... we loved it their but I always worried about selling it, ended up needing to move for more room when dc number 2 was coming along, on for ages and no viewings, finally we had 1 viewing and it got sold , it's a house that on floor plan etc doesn't appeal but once we got someone through the door it went, someone will love it like you op, for now try to love it while you have it.

I hate how homes have become investments. That's the cause of your anxiety.

You bought it because you loved it. Good for you, We should all buy homes we love. Other people can hate the layout as much as they like. You fell for its quirkiness. It works for you. DH and I bought a house with lots of smallish rooms. Everyone else loved open plan at the time and knocked through. But we like having one space to watch TV in and another for a quiet read or music practise etc.

Stop worrying about having paid a little more than you could have. Neighbours will be clueless. House prices rose steeply during lockdown so they are probably very out of date.

Start loving your house. Choose colours for it. Give it a deep clean. Put flowers in the window, lamps in shady corners. Create nooks for doing what you love doing - a reading corner or a hobby corner or a gym area.

North facing gardens can still look good. DH has done wonders with ours. We have a fond of frogs and newts, loads of birds come down, fruit trees and flowers, a lovely shady area of ferns and hydrangea, where we put a wing seat as the shade is so welcome during heatwaves.

Remind yourself what you loved about it and start making it your home.

Ah you have to stop thinking this way lovely

When the time comes to sell, someone else will fall in love with it too. Enjoy all the things you love about it now. Prices aren't going down, there are far too few homes available in Britain, so don't worry about that. The neighbours are probably thinking"ooh, we can sell ours, we'll be rich!" And forgetting that they'll have to live somewhere else which will also have huge increases in price since they bought their home. Just enjoy it.

Can you post the floor plan? perhaps we will have some great ideas for some layout changes which will mean you can add wadges of value!