WWYD house vs location

[Louisethemum]

I am sure there are so many posts like this, but I am genuinely torn and really keen to hear from people who may have been through something similar and are now out the other side!

I shall try and keep it to the point!

My family would really like to upsize our house. We don’t have enough room. We now have a relatively small mortgage thanks to a financial windfall that enabled us to pay a large chunk off (inheritance, unlikely to happen again). We are not high earners and never will be.

On of my children goes to a mainstream with resource base for SEN about 30 mins drive away (or 1 hour on the bus). We are very happy with the school & would like my son to go there too. It happens to be our hometown so we know it well.

our current location is suburbia and more expensive. All the houses are the same. However, location and facilities are fabulous. The town where my daughter’s school is is more rural, we’d have to drive here for any facilities and beyond secondary the bus links to college and uni are brilliant. However, we’d get quite a bit more house for our money in the school town, nicer area in countryside and kids would be in walking distance for secondary. Beyond that though, they’d need to travel out.

We don’t want to move again so I’m really torn as to whether we stay in this area with great facilities but a drab suburban area with small houses and a commute to secondary school, or move out to the rural town so schools in walking distance but things get a bit painful after for the kids.

Are you happy to drive lots to everything other than school when you are older?

I'd go nearer school & more rural. Walking to school is a God-send & you'd get a bigger house. When kids are older they can sort the travel, it's what works for the majority of your life.

The travel is awful though so whilst they’re not driving (and one of my children may never drive) we’d have to do it. I watched a tiktok vid recently where a woman was devastated to admit they were putting their dream countryside house back on the market to move back to where they’d come from. She said that they moved there because they loved the countryside (as do we), but then spend more time in the car than they ever had and realised they’d made a mistake. It’s really made me think

Move

Will the children want to go out independently when they’re older. Poor public transport, few facilities, distance from friends, will make things difficult for you, if you’re the default taxi service.

Oh that's a tricky one. We moved from the countryside (I hated bring so rural anyway) to a town for the schools to be walking distance and the vast majority of activities for us all, but the schools and activities are both in the same town/place. Where will most of your kids friends and activities be? In the town? If so I'd choose the town if you can afford a house big enough, I hated bring on the road all the time, my carbon footprint went up 10 fold in the countryside!

I assume the kids both have ehcps? In which case, they can have school transport so you don't need to drive all that way to school. Obviously you haven't mentioned how old they are or what their needs are so transport might not work.
I wouldn't move. It will be easier to employ pa's if you are somewhere with more going on and the kids will be able to go out and about with a pa when they are older. They may qualify for a disability bus pass too which will be more useful in a town. Respite and clubs will be easier to access and there will be more options. Less travel for medical Appointments too.

Always pick location over house. We are certainly not in our dream home at the moment as it’s too small, and hoping to move on in the next couple of years. It is now looking like that may not be an option financially, and if I had to stay here, I could because it’s in a great location.

I lived in a semi-rural location when I was a teen and spent a lot of time in the car being shuffled around to school, activities, etc. No public transport and no way of being independent. Plus, when teens do learn to drive, rural roads are usually not the safest roads for them to be driving on.