Look at new house or stay put? WWYD

[HouseHomeWWYD]

Hi all,

We’ve been in our current house for almost 3 years. It has 3 bedrooms plus a study, a very small garden and is terraced. It’s in a small town where we need to drive to the next town 15 mins away for most things - supermarket, socialising, dog groomer, dentist etc. DH’s parents also live in the town, and we’re thinking of starting a family of our own in the next year or two. We used to live with his parents when we were saving up to buy our current home. Our current mortgage is around £1000 pcm.

A house has come up in said Next Town. Semi-detached, huge garden. Much more space for our dog and potential children, set back from the road so more privacy. It’s more expensive than where we are, of course, but we think we could port our mortgage to keep a slightly more favourable rate than some of the others around at the moment. It looks like the mortgage would be around £1200-1300.

Would you move or would you stay put?

Pros for staying are that it’s a nice house and it is big enough for us currently.

Pros for the new house (or another similar one in Next Town) would be not having to drive there all the time (I recently did four round trips in a day - it’s not far, but it’s a pain to have to factor in the half-hour round trip for every appointment, extra if there’s traffic. It’s also a semi rather than terraced, so more space in that sense too.

I think a factor clouding my judgement potentially is that I’ve not really settled here. The town where we are now doesn’t feel hugely friendly and I worry that the neighbours don’t like me very much. I WFH so it’s just me and the dog here most of the time and I think DH doesn’t quite see that side of it like I do.

Would you consider the house in Next Town at all, or just stay put? Thank you in advance for reading 🙂

From what you've said, if I could afford the extra expense I'd move.

I'd move in your circumstances.

I would move as long as you definitely can port your mortgage. Or at least view the other house if you haven't already. Though presumably you would also need to sell your current house which may take longer than you think in this current climate.

Move now before you have children

In this situation I'd definitely move.

I'd move

I’d move too

It sounds like a move would be beneficial.

Definitely move if you can afford it. If you delay you might never be in a position to move and it sounds like a good house.

I’d turn the question around. Why would you not move? It sounds like a no brainer if you can afford it.

Do you think your current house would sell quickly enough though?

Can you afford the higher mortgage comfortably including when your current fixed rate ends?

Move now before you have children. The expense of childcare will affect any potential future mortgage offers.

I would.

Moving sounds like a good pla. If you have kids you may well find that you can settle ,ore easily. It's often a good time to make friends and feel part of the community. The bigger town will be better for kids in the long term too.

Yup - sounds like a good move.

Could you look at cheaper houses in the other place ? But I would definitely move to the next town , you would probably save money on fuel and time .

Thank you so much everyone, I really wasn’t expecting it to be so unanimous. I thought you’d tell me to stay put because we hadn’t been here long enough yet and I was being daft. Thank you, all 🙂

I would need to check re. porting the mortgage. It’s 3.9% for 5 years, we remortgaged not long ago so have most of that still left to run. Hopefully the interest rates may have settled a bit in 5 years’ time and DH and I both have the potential to increase our salaries before then, although we’d potentially need to take childcare and maternity leave into account if we do have children by that stage.

We’re also very lucky to have been gifted some money for our wedding quite recently which we could put towards somewhere new, even if it doesn’t end up being this house. But it will definitely help with stamp duty and moving costs.

Thank you all for your replies. I really thought I was being daft.

Sorry, I didn’t reply to the poster who asked whether ours would sell quickly. I don’t know for sure, but it’s a ‘starter home’ kind of house and they seem to always be in demand in both towns. Two have sold near us recently for about £40k over what we paid for ours when we moved (but then the knock-on effect of course is that everything further up the chain is more expensive too).

Just chatting to DH about it and he’s said we’ll look into the finances and do the sums. 🙂

I hope it works out for you 🙂

We moved recently - similar situation in that everything we did on a regular basis was 45 minutes from the house. I can’t believe how much we have saved! Not just on fuel but also on things like eating lunch out - now we just go home instead. So far it’s looking like the savings on that will cover more than half of the mortgage increase (although we weren’t reliant on that).

@User19844666884 that sounds like a great move for you, well done 🙂

The new house is also within walking/cycling distance of the railway station for DH to get to work and back, as well as a direct cycle route to the city where he works if he wanted to go that way instead. So he’d have to spend less time and money travelling to and from work, which is currently a big expense for him.

It’s also within walking distance of DH’s parents and most if not all of our activities which we currently drive to and from. We’ll look at the finances and I might show him this thread too.

Definitely move. When you do have kids you'll be happy to have grandparents within walking distance and sounds like as kids are older they'll like being in that town more and won't need lifts from you constantly! It's stressful trying to move while pregnant so definitley do it now.
The only time I'd say not to move yet would be if you prefer where you are while child free, but this isn't the case for you so definitely move

I'd move. Think of the money in fuel you'd be saving too.

It sounds like a no brainer from what you said OP. Go for it!

Thank you, everyone. I think I’m talking myself into it and convincing myself it’s a no-brainer but DH is a bit more cautious. Depending on how much we (hypothetically) paid for this new house, if we can port our existing mortgage, we’d have to get a new mortgage of £70-90k on top of that. So for that chunk, we’d be at the mercy of current interest rates. Still worth looking into, and we previously used a mortgage broker who was extremely helpful so it would be worth talking to him again too if we want to look at this seriously. Thank you again 🙂

So, basically, you live in one town but more or less your while life is in another. Do it.
I have a friend who was in the same position, gorgeous house in one town, enviable, but spent her whole life in another for various reasons (and of course your friendship network develops round your activities, so you get more and more knitted into the town you spend your time in).

In the end she moved to the hub of her life town and has never looked back, her lifestyle does not now revolve around shuttling between residence and walking activities, and the kids are getting a bit older so can walk to a lot of stuff which would have remained a parent lift task forever otherwise.