How to handle regret?

[SunflowerFieldsForever]

How do you handle buyer's regret?
And how do you forget properties you wish you'd made an offer on in hindsight but were not 100% sure at the time?

I don't want to go over these decisions again and again in my head...but can't stop! Any tips on how to make peace with past decisions? It's such a big decision you can't simply reverse.
For next time: How do you know a property is right for you if the 100% property is always going to be out of budget? What do you compromise on and what not?
All wisdom gratefully received 🙏

I don’t think you can be 100% certain. We’ve bought/sold 5 times and two of those were dreadful mistakes (not realised until we moved in), 3 of them weren’t. I think we made the decisions in the same way each time. Specific situation and context different each time of course though.

Top advice is try not to make a ‘heart’ decision and/or when you’re going through or recovering from another big life event (grief, etc).

In terms of regret - in both our ‘mistakes’ we moved on quite quickly. One after just over a year the other after 3 years. My only regret is that we didn’t move on more quickly the second time - three miserable years wasted of my kids’ very early years living somewhere I hated. It makes me sad to think back on it and about all the happy memories we could have been making instead. Life is too short!

'Comparison is the thief of joy'

Do you do this in life or just house purchases?

You need to concentrate on the here and now. There were reasons why you didn't go for the other houses - too expensive, too much work, too near a busy road, crap school catchment etc. Sometimes the house you're in is the best compromise house, not necessarily your 'dream home' but right for now.

If it's genuinely a horrible mistake, start making a plan of how to move on, recognising you might need to live there a while first.

Good luck

I don’t know … there is a house my husband and I have regret over as it was just out of our price range but otherwise perfect.

5 years on we still mention it … wasn’t that a great house… yeah, but we couldn’t afford it, remember?

I don’t think any property is 100%, it’s stupid to expect that. You have to decide what you are willing to compromise on

What's your life stage? Are you planning to move somewhere and stay there a long time? Do you need to think about schools?

Our compromise house (lived there 5 years), we knew it wasn't our forever home. We bought it because:

• We knew we would be able to sell it quickly when we needed to. It was very close to an outstanding secondary school and good primary schools. Also near the station and good road links
• We compromised on the outside aesthetics - horrible 60s house but had big rooms inside
• Compromised on not having a utility room (wasn't in our price bracket)
• Compromised on not having a usable garage - there was one but we struggled to get our fiesta in it.

Our next (current) home was the one we knew we would hopefully be spending at least the next 20 years in so we knew that as long that it had the right square footage we could make it work.

Location & square footage were our primary focus (schools & access to London). I love where we live now - it was a probate property (we would not have been able to afford it if it was done up) and everything needed upgrading and had quite a lot of reconfiguring to do - worth it in the end.

Thank you, it's really helpful to hear your thoughts.
Yes of course, nothing is 100%. I am aware I need to compromise but I struggle to decide what to compromise on.

Really interesting to hear that it's probably best to move sooner rather than later... I kind of want to make it work because I worry it's just going to be the same next time (a bit too small (budget constraints), annoying neighbours, awful freeholder, road too noisy.. that sort of thing..) as I can't afford freehold or my own house in the area I want to be in and where the school is..

Plus side is it's an amazing location (apart from noisy road) and in a gorgeous building that I love.

That's really helpful, I take it its really important to decide how long you'd like to live there. DH is not from the UK and doesn't understand the Uk property market that well so it's super difficult to discuss these things together.
Are buyer's agents a thing? I feel I need someone with expertise to discuss.
I always worry that I pay too much or can't sell it onward without a huge loss.

We sold our last house to my eternal regret and shame without doing it up - which it definitely deserved - because my DH had decided the location (West Midlands) was wrong for us.

We'd bought it with huge plans to restore it to its former Arts & Crafts glory, having coveted it from afar on Rightmove whilst we were completing our previous renovation of a thatched house in Wiltshire. The moment I set foot inside the gorgeous but neglected house my heart missed a beat as I knew all our furniture and decorative stuff collected over many years would work perfectly there. It felt like home although it hadn't been lived in since the previous owner (a single businessman who had bought it purely because his ex GF's parents used to own it!) had moved on to greater things.

Sadly my mum died shortly after we'd moved in (6 months after I'd lost my dad - both had dementia and were in a Hampshire nursing home) and everything started to spiral with us blaming the house/long distance move for our woes. Eventually after 3 years we sold it at a loss and moved away. In the 5+ years since there hasn't been a day I've not thought about that house and felt full of regret.

The house we went on to buy (and where we are now) was hideous. A repossession that had had all its 400 years old character ripped out. I hated it on sight and even after transforming it into a stunning home, I can't wait to sell up (next few weeks it'll be going on the market..yay!) and if I could buy the other house back I'd do it in a heartbeat. Funny thing is that now DH agrees with me 🙄

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight @SunflowerFieldsForever I'd definitely not waste too much of my life somewhere I'm not happy if I were you.

Try not to be hard on yourself. House buying is so difficult. Regret is such a powerful emotion and it stops you from moving on. It will take time to stop focussing on what might have been.

There is a concept in economics known as 'sunk cost'. A very simplified explanation of it is that there is no point dwelling on or taking into account money/effort already spent in the past when deciding what to do in the future. You have to just look at where you are financially and in other respects now, and take decisions on what will be best to do next given your current circumstances. e.g., A company may have bought some new tools, but if they have turned out to be not right for the job, or the job has changed and they don't suit it any more, and using them will cost more in the long run than junking it and buying better kit, you buy the better kit and get rid of the stuff you bought previously- you don't waste even more staff time and materials persisting in using it because it cost a lot of money. (It's surprising how many people think because they spent a lot on something that they should persist with it, without working out if that makes any financial sense.)
It doesn't mean 'don't learn from your mistakes'. Learn from them by all means, but do not dwell on the fact you made them. Take what you have learned, which could be, 'always get a survey' or similar, and let the past go. Financially, and emotionally.

We now live in our third and final house , our first house we were FTB naive twenties but still bought in a popular area near parks, golf club, good schools and decent bus routes within the town we then managed to sell after 12 years for a profit some years of this we rented it too which covered our mortgage etc
but our second purchase was a mistake and we didn’t know it was mistake until we actually put it in the market after 6 years , this was in peak 2021 but we really struggled to sell and it only when he had feedback from viewers we realized how rural and cut off it was, no amenities , no school within walking distance , there was a canal in the garden for food relief that did not bother us but it did the viewers and the lost goes in this is despite us improving the house with new gas connection new Bosch boiler painting decorating , new carpets etc in the years we didn’t make a loss of say we broke Even but I still go and look at rightmovr sold houses throne we let go due to poor decision making and keep regretting ; it irritates my husband he thinks we had a quiet life good neighbors in that house as it worked for us and not making profit doesn’t bother him but I keep comparing my friends who were in similar situation and made 200k profit in four years because they bought in outstanding school cathchment or the house we viewed but didn’t buy all later sold for high profits etc and keep crying over split milk 😔
we now think we made some rational choices and bought the current house last year only time will tell if this was a wise decision or not, we won’t be selling this though as it is our forever home
so I sympathize with u as I am hopelessly similar to u …

We are very risk averse so would only make a decision after working through all the angles. If something doesn't work out, we know we tried everything and it was meant to be this way and we move on. I'm not sure regret is a useful thought, I guess it only serves as a "follow your gut next time" lesson to be learned.

To help us move on, we discuss all the negatives and possible bad scenarios and issues we could have had. Then it's important draw a line under it to focus on positive future endeavours.

I still think about "the house that got away" because I can see it from the crossroads I walk down everyday.

The dream house was the same price as the house I eventually bought, but it had a bigger garden, extension done (though old), downstairs toilet and a larger upstairs footprint, plus it was much closer to the station.

I lost out on it after the elderly owner pulled out after months of conveyancing. I was devastated at the time, but looking back I'm slightly glad I dodged it as I'd be coming out of a 2 year fix right about now if I'd completed on it .

By the time I came to complete on my current house the market was starting to wobble, so I took a 5 year fix ending in 2027. Every cloud and all that, and this is a £1,300 per month shaped cloud

*this is a £1,300 per month silver lining shaped saving

When we moved to where we are now, we had to find something quickly, so maybe didn't find the perfect dream house. This is the first house I've never felt like a pea in a pod in. I've dealt with it by thinking about the positives, being grateful I have a roof over my head that works for the family, and undertaking projects to make the place my own. We won't move for a while but, when we do, I'll make sure it's for the right house.