So we sold our starter home and upsized in 2022 to a lovely 3bed house in the country, intended to be our long term, raising a family type home. To get the house we borrowed less than our maximum and repayments are about £1150pcm right now on a 2yr fix. We're living on a tight but doable budget on my husband's salary while I'm on maternity leave. It's okay for the moment.
But we are due to look for a new deal next spring. We can afford our repayments to rise by a few hundred with some cutbacks, but no way can we afford rates of 6% or more. We just can't. 4% maybe, but not 6! We're also in adverse credit (not much, but enough to lock us out of a lot of the 'better' deals) and my son is due to start nursery in February (goodbye my entire wage!)
We probably can't extend our mortgage term as that would take my husband past retirement age by the end of it, which unless I'm mistaken most lenders wouldn't allow? We have no room to take in lodgers and won't want to while we have young children. We live frugally already, we don't drink, smoke, have any debt, or eat out much.
I'm well aware we may have overborrowed and probably made a naff decision in deciding to stretch ourselves financially in order to get our dream home - we naively assumed wage increases over time would make it easier year on year.
Given everything our options are:
Sell, massively downsize
Sell up and rent, return to the market in a few years
Buying and selling simultaneously last year was so incredibly stressful, I don't think I'm ever willing to do that again. So the latter would be our most likely path. I've made my peace with the fact that we may well be forced to sell up and start again.
Anyone else in a similar position? I don't think we're alone in not having planned for this. I'm not looking for advice, just a place to moan and swap stories of woe I guess!