Living between two properties

[reptylequeen]

We live and work in London. Need to for work. We have a one bed in Zone 1, super central, love it.

But now we are getting to our 40s, we want space, and quiet too. We can't afford the type of house we'd want in London, so we're going to stick with the flat. We are thinking about buying a house outside of London (different country) and spending a month at a time living in the holiday home (it would be our other home).

Has anyone got the split time thing to work?

Sounds wonderful! Who’s going to look after your holiday home when you’re in London? And vice versa?

We live between two properties - we thought we'd live alternate weeks in each property but practicality took over - we run a business in London (we can't relocate this) and we look after Mil in the other location. So mid-week for London and weekend to look after our elderly relative. The kids who were at Uni when we started doing this struggled with it initially but they've come around and now quite enjoy it - they also don't always come with us.

Will you need a mortgage (you’ll need a specialist product for a second home) ? Can you afford the additional stamp duty for a second home? All the furnishings and contents? Does your income cover 2 x council tax (beware empty property penalties), utilities, insurance (will need to be specialist empty property cover), etc? Assume you don’t have kids at school, activities etc to work around.

Why couldn’t you just rent an Airbnb or cottage every now and then to get the space you crave? I guarantee it will be cheaper and less hassle to do that rather than buying a second home (says ex owner of second home: emphasis on EX 😉)

We juggle this at the moment. I have a property in the north West that the children live in a three bedroom house so they all have a bedroom each when I say children they are all over 20.
And then my son and I lived somewhere else for better schools.

Honestly not sure what the long-term plan is. It’s very much a case of Wait and C what my son decides to do with his education if he goes to university I would imagine it’s there somewhere else. House we will sell.
Yes, it gets expensive with bills and Maintainence
But it’s no more expensive than a five bedroom house would be if we were all living together