Moving from a 2 bed rental to buying a 1 bed?

[geysha]

We currently rent a two bedroom apartment. We’re a couple. It’s fairly spacious for a city centre location. We use the spare room as an office or for guests.

We want to buy somewhere rather rent. We could just about afford to buy a one bedroom flat in the block. It has exactly the same size living room which includes an area that can be partitioned off for occasional overnight guests. One bedroom but it’s bigger so could fit a desk.

Does this sound sensible or silly?

The obvious question is how old are you and would you ever want children.

.... followed by - could you live there in the event of another lockdown!

Agreed. If there's no prospect of children in the future and you'll only occasionally need space for visitors ( who could technically sleep elsewhere) then it seems sensible. However if you're planning on expanding your family in the future it's probably not a wise choice to limit yourself to one apartment block and a one bedroom flat.

No children likely, not for another 10 years minimum.

I would buy it, DH and I lived happily in a one bed flat for 4 years. My DS has a 2 bed flat, in 6 months they’ve had guests stay 4 nights.

I would never buy a flat. Too many pitfalls with it being leasehold, service charges can go up anytime and they're always much harder to sell on compared to houses. There are a huge number of flats up for sale at the moment that have been on sale for months, some even years. You could be stuck for years and years in that flat if you buy it so I would hang on and save more for a small house.

I’ve heard it said not to buy a house based on space for guests.

1 bed is fine for you and your DP but I’d considered partitioning the area off for office space as working and sleeping in one room can get too much.

If you want somewhere for guests I’d consider getting a sofa bed as your sofa in lounge.

1 bed flats can be harder to sell. The pool of people finding them suitable for long term living is simply smaller. You need to factor that in to your offer. Be careful not to overpay now that the market seems to be having some areas falling in value.

Buy it

I did it.
It was the WORST thing that I could have done and a horrible decision.

Buy it - it's always better to buy because after 25 years you'll own it whereas after 25 years in a rental you'll own nothing - is having mates over occasionally really worth 25 years of equity in a home? Really worth you forking out all that rent money? Do they do the same for you? Be cheaper to buy a house AND pay the Premier Inn price for them to stay in.