Downsizing

[Baxdream]

We are considering downsizing to reduce our outgoings. We have a good size detached house. I think it's worth at least 625. We'd be looking at moving to a house around £375k.
This will reduce our mortgage to probably about 150000. We have an income of about £7500 take home per month.
We just want to reduce our outgoings and be able to live - nice holidays, weekends away etc.
Has anyone done this? Was as good as it looks on paper?

Would the new house still be detached? If not, would you be happy with the potential of noisy neighbours/party wall issues or simply just hearing others go about their daily lives?

Ideally yes. We'd be in the next town along which is a bit cheaper (still nice, we lived there before) In all honesty I don't mind that when I think of the pay off. We have neighbours here that have parties etc which grates more as we pay a premium to live here!

Just stumbled across this post and wondered if you made the move or are still considering? Downsizing is something I am weighing up too

No we are still here! However we are likely to go on the market in the summer. We're unsure if we will downsize by much. We might drop by about £100k which will still give us a bit more flexibility but not too much size difference.

We are doing this for the same reason to improve lifestyle. Selling our 4 bed detached and buying a 4 bed semi. Price difference 200k. Hoping to complete soon.

We keep thinking about downsizing from a 4 bed detached. I couldn't countenance moving back to a semi - we've become very used to the extra space and not worrying that the TV or music is too loud.

We did it in 2015. Moved from an old large 5 bed house £500 to an 1980s compact 4 bed house costing £300. The most important thing is to declutter and drastically streamline your belongings and have good storage. It’s very liberating minimising the mortgage and the life mess. There is space to extend if we ever feel the urge but I doubt we will.

Have you worked out how much of the downsize will be swallowed up by stamp duty / solicitor fees / moving costs?

This is another reason we haven't downsized - an eye-watering amount of money with nothing to show for it at the end!

Yes I have. I've moved a few times so understand the cost implications.

We haven’t downsized as we never upsized, thought about it a lot though, even viewed some houses and had ours on the market briefly but couldn’t find anything we like enough to pay the extra £300k to go from a 3-bed semi to a 4-bed detached (with 2 reception rooms). We only have one child so have a spare room for guest, although I’d love a playroom so toys aren’t in the lounge. Our lifestyle is great the COL hasn’t really affected us, income is c£7k per month and our mortgage is £740 a month, we have nice holidays, eat out 2-3 times a week and don’t worry about money much, we still have to think about big purchases but aren’t stressed about the costs of day to day expenses. If we upsized it would be at least another £2.5k mortgage for 25 years (we only have 10 years left on our small mortgage) plus higher council tax, utilities, insurance etc.
DSIS has the big house and is very stressed, she wants to reduce her hours but can’t as she has to pay the mortgage.