Would you move into the most expensive rental you can afford?

[blackshoepolish]

We need to move flats. We aren’t ready to buy yet so that’s not an option being considered (already have most of a deposit).

We are considering between two flats.
Flat A) £2,300 a month is big enough and nice but probably wouldn’t be happy there long term.
Flat B) £2,950 a month, is huge, has a separate study and is somewhere I think we’d be happy until we buy.

Flat B is the maximum we’d be comfortable paying in rent. Our take home pay is roughly £7,500 a month. Next year, our income will increase to about £11,500 a month take home (dp qualifies as a lawyer).

I’m so surprised everyone is saying Flat A.

I say go for Flat B!

It’s so important to love where you live and if the nicer flat gives you a little bit more joy every day then it’s worth it.

£2,950 rent is around 25% of your future take home pay of £11.5k. Well within the advised % which I believe is around 30%.

33%. But I've seen higher ratios when London is mentioned of late - closer to 40% iirc.

This is what we did. In fact we didn't even rent a self contained flat before we bought our first place - we rented a room in a flatshare, and we didn't buy until our mid 30s and had a similar joint salary to OP. We saved a huge deposit and squirreled other investments, and managed to clear the mortgage on our first property within 6 years.