Feel trapped in house- budget and schools

[Led92]

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful but I feel trapped in my house.

We’ve been here 8 years, had to totally renovate so every room is how I like things and had 3 DC’s here. It’s a leafy part of London but I feel done now.

I’d like to move somewhere quieter and maybe more rural but with good connections in and preferably a nice detatched house… Maybe like a Faversham type area…. but when I look at house prices of those that appeal we basically can’t.
Stamp duty for any move would have to come out of the house sale so that kills it further and then oldest DC is in primary school so we’d be relying on an in year transfer and ultimately I’d want to target an area with good secondaries but..

We can’t afford anything, so we’re stuck! I knew having third DC would limit our ability to ‘upgrade’ the house given our childcare costs but with increased flexible working thought we could move out further and our money would get us more but nope… nothing with kerb appeal anyway.

Its annoying and getting me down.

do you need to stay in London?

Need to go to London 3 times a month. Currently that’s a day travel card and about £14 a day. From north west advance tickets at sensible times are £115 and getting train so early needs a taxi £20 and then still need tube trips to it’s about £150.
making commuting costs £450 a month instead of under £45. No other offices in UK.
As I say our house is 4 bed, 2 bath with a garden office for wfh. We’re in the catchment of Kent grammars but house not actually worth a lot and need to take £20k out for stamp duty and rest of moving costs too (or use emergency savings). North west ideal but any grammar catchment and a nicer house (same footprint but detatched with a garden) is just too pricey.

Anyway going over how I feel myself but in general I’m sure lots of people may feel a bit stuck too.

This is such a fallacy. That doesn't work because aside from the whole market stagnating due to those left in negative equity, even those with significant equity end up needing high LTV mortgages which attract higher interest rates making even lower levels of borrowing more expensive overrall. It's really not as simple as people like to imply, almost everyone gets even more stuck in a falling market.

We're in a somewhat similar situation, although looking to upsize rather than move location. We have a 1200 sq ft 3 bed + office semi in the south east. To get a 1600+ sq ft 4 bed detached in our current location would be an extra £300-400k, which just seems mad. It's a nice village and quite middle class, but the houses are just normal, it's not posh. We'd be looking at a mortgage of £3k minimum per month on the current interest rates. We both work FT and earn well, so it feels crazy that we still don't have enough money to reasonably afford something bigger.

I’d like to upgrade to detached with a large garden in catchment of good schools. Looked at West Wirral and Knutsford.

@Led92 Are you prepared to compromise your criteria? Detached houses with large gardens are going to be expensive, even in the slightly less "posh" areas. Just assuming you're meaning Caldy/Gayton/Lower Heswall areas, that is going to be difficult to find something detached in a large plot in reasonably good nick (so you don't have to spend thousands you don't have on doing it up). Have you looked further back, like West Kirby, Meols, Greasby or Hoylake? Still considered salubrious areas but on the nicer side of the M53...

It'll be harder to find large gardens and detached within a reasonable budget, so are you prepared to compromise at all with a semi-detached, or a detached in a smaller plot? Or something further out than your ideal (if Caldy etc is your ideal)?

(I don't know Knutsford at all so not going to comment on that)

This is exactly it the jump in our area is about £300k. Elsewhere in Sussex/Kent it’s about £200k.

Yes would compromise on detatched first I think as we’re currently semi detatched and fine. Anyway we’ll see what happens, heard rumblings at work they’re trying to get people into the office more again which is a shame.. most of the people I work with are off shore and my presence in the office simply allows me to dial into calls with them from the office!

Sounds like you're in a nice place but could also move with a few compromises so more stuck by your desires than by reality. I'd sacrifice the kerb appeal for a start, the space and the schools would be more important for day to day living.

The thing is it’s such a big change and thousands in stamp duty I would want it to be right. Potentially our house for next 20 years or more I wouldn’t want to ‘compromise’ then regret.

Historically you would move up the housing ladder by a combination of building up savings, progressing in your career/earning a higher salary, and paying down your mortgage and building equity. As interest rates were higher in the past I imagine the first two were the biggest factors that allowed people to take on the additional costs needed to move to a larger house.

It's only been in recent years that house price rises have allowed people to quickly build up large amounts of equity and move up the ladder without saving or earning more. Unfortunately I think those days are over and we'll all just have to keep saving or apply for promotions if we want the dream house.

But staying where you are is a compromise 🤷‍♀️

You need to earn more money. Simple! Then you won’t have a problem.

why don’t you get a better job, then your problem will be solved and you will be able to keep up with the Joneses.

Stuck here too. We chose the location seven years ago as it was halfway between where I worked and where DH worked at the time. DCs go to school near where I worked. However, both DH and I have changed jobs so our only commute is to school and back. However, this is an hour round trip, twice a day. We want to move closer to their schools but prices have gone up massively in that town whereas our house hasn’t increased much. Stamp duty would also be massive so we would have to downsize. We love our house and hate the thought of paying the same or more for one that isn’t as nice. We’re just going round in circles.

OP - how much money is your current house worth? You’ve not said. You’ve said what you want and that you can’t afford it in the posh areas you know about, but until you say what you think you’d actually get for your house, no one can advise you.

or is that the point - that you probably could get a similar sized house out of London in a nice area but don’t want to make the move?

Would you be prepared to take on a fixer upper and live in it while you renovate it slowly? We wanted more space with kerb appeal on a limited budget, so went for a 'project'. Stamp duty was lower as purchase price was significantly lower. We had enough money left to do the structural work, and now decorate and pretty things up/furnish as we go along and earn. So it's hopefully not a lifetime project, but definitely a very long term project.

Don’t really want to go into details and I’m capable myself of house hunting in the areas I like…. My point was that to ‘upgrade’ in wider south east county is another £200k, where I currently live £300k+ and in the North West near family is similarly out of reach. I could afford a house like I have now which is basically a 1930’s semi with a loft conversion. The point is I can’t really afford anything better, not near good schools and family at least. And I’ve looked! Anything that comes up that might be doable is gone in a flash.

Yup! All the schools being oversubscribed as well is problematic and my DD is in a great primary just down the road.
I know a military family moved nearby and got spaces for their young children at the worst schools in the borough, they appealed and got places by exception of their profession but a bit scary!
The schools and our house have made it very ‘sticky’ here and so we’ve become stuck and it’s a bit of a shame. I feel ungrateful but also that I’d like to move on and can’t.

Yes our current house was probate and needed everything doing, new electrics, boiler, redecoration, bathroom, kitchen. We’d have to approach it differently with kids instead of going for it all at once like we did but I wouldn’t mind. Again though it’s quite rare to find a good value fixer upper that’s discounted enough to redo in a nice way! But have seen some that basically just need redecoration and a new kitchen, that’s be preferable tbh.

Come to the Shire. You won't be sorry, we certainly aren't!

You need to get more savings. Look into advancing your career. That’s the only way. If you don’t have as much as 20k in your savings, you’re probably not the best candidate to be swapping houses anyway. Unless you have lost of equity and moving to a cheaper area, and can afford to price it attractively, because buyers are quite hard to come by these days.

The way people normally move up the housing ladder is to earn more money as they get older. A higher salary means the banks will lend more money plus you have a bigger deposit from the sale of your home. In a falling market they can also benefit from the more expensive house getting cheaper compared to their current home, as in the example you gave.

It’s not reasonable to expect that anyone can buy a more expensive house as they get older if their salaries have stayed the same. The solution to your problem is to find a better paid job, do overtime etc. Or accept that you aren’t career driven which is ok but will have implications re not being able to afford to move to a bigger house unless you move to a cheaper area.

My salary has increased significantly since I bought my home however we now have 3 children and so have significant childcare costs. I’ve previously said I’m aware that having children has impacted our ability to afford a move.

A couple of years ago I could have borrowed slightly more based on affordability but not enough to make the next jump locally…. and I don’t believe I can or should borrow more now since interest rates have gone up significantly as well as other outgoings . In fact we’re overpaying our current mortgage so when we come off 2.2% interest rate it won’t feel like such a hike-and we’ll have less debt to service anyway- at 5%.

And to pp I do have sufficient savings but they’re ringfenced in case of redundancy to see us through at least 3 months of outgoings, I’m not willing to use them for stamp duty so that would need to come out of the sale of this house.

You make certain decisions that have a big impact on your available finances such as having 3 children, overpaying your current mortgage and ring fencing your savings.
Decisions have consequences. I’m not saying your decisions are bad ones but they have led you to a certain outcome which is that you don’t have enough disposable income to move to a bigger house unless you compromise on location. Moving to a significantly more affordable area to buy a bigger or better house is another decision some people make but maybe you aren’t prepared to. That is why you’re stuck, because you have made certain choices and they have led to this outcome.

That’s what I’ve looked at though the “more affordable areas” don’t have schools comparable to Kent Grammars OR are so far out of London the commute makes them unaffordable. South West London and Surrey completely ruled out. Places North like Amersham are so expensive. Possibly need to look more at somewhere like Chelmsford?

To be fair I didn’t make decisions about interest rates or cost of living that otherwise would have allowed us a bigger budget! If I had come on here saying should I spend my savings on stamp duty everyone would be saying no!

I’m not making excuses to be ‘stuck’ genuinely found on looking that moving to a nice area to a nice house with good schools is significantly out of reach financially or represents a big compromise on our criteria like schools.

I’m pointing out the decisions you made that have contributed to this outcome not all the things that are out of your control.
You seem like someone who has high expectations of life in general- you don’t see why you shouldn’t have as many children as you want, live in a fairly central London zone or another highly desirable area, send your children to excellent schools AND be able to upsize to a better property when you want to. But life isn’t like that for most people. You seem a little unrealistic that you can have all the things you want when in reality few of us can do that and that’s why we end up compromising.