never-ending doubt about house decision! Please help!

[Monkeyportrait]

I know there are a few 'small' house threads on here, but this one is quite specific to the impending economic crisis and I wondered if anyone had any advice.

We started to look for our first house earlier in the summer ((we are 40 and 42 with one DC, hoping to have a second); we saw a place nearby in London that we liked. We managed to get an offer accepted, and immediately stopped looking at other places, but I also felt that the house, although nice, was too small.

It is a maisonette with a small living room and a semi-open plan kitchen downstairs (that's all), and two small double bedrooms upstairs, plus bathroom. Those are the only rooms, 70sqm. There is a nice yard which feels a bit like part of the house. DH will have to work in a garden shed (no room comfortably for desk in the bedroom, and the living area would be grim if it were an office).

Places that are big enough for us are about 20k out of our budget and we can't raise anymore. But I've always had a feeling of claustrophobia about this place even though it is nice. It's in a good area, near our friends, but I have insomnia and the idea of having to regularly sleep on the sofa gets to me, plus having DH work in a shed.

It was very difficult to get a mortgage - they queried the cladding on the house (which is actually fine) and we lost one mortgage because they didn't want to lend on an ex-local for various reasons. It took us four months to get one, which we secured just before interest rates went crazy.

Today is the last day I have to make a decision on this place because they are waiting for us to complete - but yesterday I was actually sick with the stress of trying to balance up the "should" against the feeling that it wasn't quite right, and I've certainly never been sick with stress before :(

We would intend to stay five years max, but it might not be easy to sell. On the other hand, we are in a secure rental owned by my brother which is ours if we want and in a good area. Also two beds.

If we DON'T move into the new place, we lose our pre-hike mortgage (3.2%) and remain out of the housing market for around 2/3 years at least, providing interest rates did actually come down.

We are trying to have another child: if I get pregnant, I won't be able to get a mortgage because I'll be on maternity leave... DH says this is our last chance. I keep thinking it isn't, but also worrying that it is (hence puking).

I feel like I'm going completely nuts because I can see all these reasons for moving now, but I also feel really depressed about moving to somewhere that is too small and we have to sell on within five years.

X

This is what I would do

Complete on purchase to get on property ladder
Remain at brothers rental property
Let new place out to tenants
Wait for your personal circumstances to change (eg baby)
Serve notice on tenants.
Put property on the market and sell
Move to a new property.

Thank you - that's a very interesting idea... Savvy, which I'm not!!

This. I was about to say go with your gut instinct and stay put for the moment as things are very uncertain at the moment, however this would allow you to keep your mortgage deal, cover the payments with the rent and not have the stress of moving to a place that you don't really want to go to. I am in a very similar situation to you, it's my last chance to buy, all I can afford, but despite living in a tiny rental which is driving me nuts, it means moving away alone to an area that I don't know and from everything I've known for the last 15 years. I'm under a similar pressure, exchange is imminent and I have to make a decision. Very scary but renting it out seems like a good solution for you. Good luck!

Sorry, meant to quote this!

Would the OP not need to have obtained a BTL mortgage to do that?

We are just about to do as suggested, rent the property out. I'm miserable in our house (different situation as we have a mortgage). I don't like the area, it's too far from school but we can't sell. So we are considering doing a consent to let for 2 years. That way at least we are still paying down the mortgage. On your fab rate I would go for it.

What happened in the end?

Hello! I had to be brave and say I couldn't move there. We stopped looking for a while, then started again in spring last year. We found somewhere for the same price with a small third bedroom, which we use constantly, and we haven't looked back - DH says in retrospect the other place would have been the wrong thing to do. I see it as a strange stage in our relationship when I couldn't speak up for what I felt was right but we were under big pressure financially. In the end we had to take a risk and it did work out...

It’s always so interesting to read an update on threads like this. Goes to show it’s a good thing you listened to your gut. Pleased for you that it worked out.

Thanks - that's good to know! I appreciate you sharing.

I'm in a tricky position at the moment - I don't want to write too much in public, but I've been looking for a while, and I'm more wobbly about locations than anything else - like which city to move to. I am currently buying in one location, but still feel a bit sick about it, but not sure I can think of one that is better, and I do have to get out of my current situation. I think with me I'm going to have to try it and see - perhaps I should have rented there first, but would that feel the same, I don't know. I loved the house when I first viewed it, but the process has taken so long that I now feel sick about it, and not sure if it is because I tried to stop myself liking it in that time, or my feelings really have changed. I've been looking for so long now, and don't feel there is the "perfect place" for me, so having to make these compromises is hard - maybe I just need to give it a go.

I'm glad you listened to yourself. I think with me I am finding it hard to hear what I want at the moment.

Hello! Thanks @AmberMariens , yes it was a massive strain at the time but it worked out! We did lose our mortgage but we also managed to find another low rate one, which I guess shows that in these kind of dilemmas you put all sorts of worstcase scenarios up around yourself, and they all help to fence you in.

@Singlemid40s , I'm really sorry to read about your struggles. It sounds like you're in a tough situation given that you're moving cities as well as finding a house - that's huge and not a situation I've been in. But I'm interested that you loved the house you're purchasing when you first walked in. I wanted to ask why - do you remember how you felt, and what the feeling was made up of? I ask because when I walked into the house we have now, I could envisage a life in it, in a way that I hadn't in the previous one. It wasn't a future that I'd imagined or fantasised about but it was strangely different - I imagined by DH loving the kitchen because of the light; I imagined myself being able to work in the box room as a study, which felt exciting as I had hadn't had a work space of my own since we had our child. It sort of activated new bits of me and made me imagine a future which was more long-term than the other place. By contrast, I'll never forget when we walked out of our second viewing of the other place, I had this strange sense that we could only stay in it a very short time, and that stopped me being able to see a future.

Did you have any feelings of a "future" in the place you're buying? Why did you like it? Could the stress of the whole business and the idea of settling somewhere new - which can be alienating in the abstract - be putting you off? I was thinking about what you said re renting somewhere to see if you liked the area. In one sense, I'm not sure whether that would help as the home you create - your "root" in the place - is quite important and the rest would follow.

Anyway, just some ideas as I think "thought experiments" can be helpful in dilemmas like this. There is a lot going on in your situation and it must be very hard to imagine growing into a city and a house all at once.

Thanks for the update. Glad to hear that it all worked out in the end with an alternative property.

It's hard to differentiate sometimes between compromise, and there's always compromises with property, and gut feeling that the property is just not right.

Gut feeling is very powerful providing that a sense of logic is also applied. It's no good wishing for a property that is clearly unaffordable for the budget available to suddenly pop up in the desired location, but it's definitely worth listening to those constant niggles that a property isn't the right one within the confines of budget/location etc.

I too have previously had niggles about two houses that were eating away at me for not really being the right ones. Both fell through, which wasn't my doing, but I went on to purchase more suitable options. Sometimes what is meant to be just happens.

Thank you @Monkeyportrait - I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of that. It's such an emotional and stressful time, isn't it. Whilst being so lucky to be able to afford a property, the risks, responsibility and unknowns are huge. So hard to know sometimes.

What did I love - the space - the style - the fact it wasn't run down like a lot of the other places I'd seen, and it felt cosy (but that was in winter!) and I felt safe there as I have a friend living nearby. But it's also in a bit of a poorer area of the town, so I think maybe I'm having some feelings about that, and just that I have mixed feelings about everywhere - hating places, and then loving them, then hating them - it's so difficult to trust my gut with all of that going on. I guess at least I don't have a partner to negotiate with, but then also I don't have the support of a partner, or a purpose to be in a place either, so a lot of the feelings around that are getting mixed up in it, and perhaps a lot of weight about the choice of house solving my other problems too. There have been so many compromises in the search, that perhaps that has taken the shine off it - or the wanting of that excited feeling again. Would love to cast forward a few years and see how each option panned out - that crystal ball would be amazing.