Has anyone bought a house that wasn’t ideal but it was ok in the end?

[drakesqueen]

We are in the process of buying a house in a different area due to job commitments but due to there being so little on the market at the moment we’ve had to make many compromises. Location is good but the house is a little small for us, we can just about fit everything and everyone in but it’s much smaller than our current home. Storage may be an issue as it’s a much newer build with very few cupboards.
It’s nicely decorated and quite new but the kitchen is smaller than I’m used to and I’m worrying about the ease of cooking and having enough worktop space.
The garden is NNW facing so won’t get the sun all day like ours does now and I think I’ll miss looking out onto a sunny garden.
I got a nice feel for the house but every place I’ve ever bought before I’ve had one viewing and wanted it - it was a gut feeling. Now we are buying because practically it’s the best on paper. I’ve never had this before - I’m usually excited and not looking back but this time I’m scared I’m going to grieve my current home where we have things so easy and where I know how things work, the quirks etc.
This may be an age thing as I’m deep into peri with all the anxiety that brings. DH is losing patience with me as I keep weeping about it all and being scared we will hate it.
Does this mean that really this isn’t the house for us or is it normal and it’ll be fine once we are in?

Do you have all the space planned out in terms what each room will be, major furniture measurement checks, bedroom allocations etc?

If you've done all that and everything basically fits then you should be totally fine. A good declutter frees up a surprising amount of space, and you can gradually change furniture to things that are space saving if you want to. Maybe look up interior design for small home pages on Instagram as you'll find loads of really lovely ideas that work well in smaller homes.

I've had wobbles and cried over (different) issues while my husband struggled to understand how I could still be worrying about that thing that he thought he'd put to bed last time we discussed it. In the end it was anxiety I think as the issues would magnify and escalate in my mind until I saw the house again. Then I'd feel a lot better because i could plainly see it wasnt that bad, but the moment we left the creeping doubt would begin and the issues would become bigger and bigger in my mind. It turned out fine!

Grieving your current house sounds normal but I think you should keep that in a separate box in your mind to the new house. It wouldn't matter where you were going, you'd miss your home and all its quirks and the comforting feelings in evokes. Maybe let yourself be sad about the old house but don't muddle it with thinking about the new place and feeling sad in the same breath. The new place can become home too.

Now, it you haven't done any of the planning for how you'll arrange things, maybe do some of that and it might give you some clarity about whether it will work.

Can you rent for a while? I am a believer in falling in love with the possibilities of a house and for me the compromises might be too much here.
I once rented a house with a north facing garden and never got to grips with it. In 9 months we never sat on the patio as it felt cold and unwelcoming.
However I’ve learned here some people prefer it so it’s horses for courses. This doesn’t sound like your course.

Yes. We bought a house becuase it was in the location we needed and if was big enough to meet our needs. Didn’t really like anything else about it. It tuned out to be a great purchase. Bit of rejigging the space and a bit of decorating and it looked amazing and it had great garden. learned to love it in the end.

Thank you. I’ve used a room planner so know what will fit, what doesnt fit and what we’ll need to buy that does fit. This has helped me feel confident about the rooms. I’m mostly concerned about the kitchen that has about half the worktop space my current one does so It’ll be a bit stressy when I’m cooking for family when they visit. We will have a garage which is a bonus as we don’t have one now so some things can be kept out there. I’m just thinking that after costs and moving fees we won’t be any better off financially - people usually move to smaller homes to free up cash or live by the coast or their dream location. Ours will be a decent location but it’s a move to save a bit on the commute rather than anything else. I’m almost wondering if we should have stayed but and driven that bit further to work.

I’ve annoyed my husband so much. He’s seems completely emotionally unattached to our current home and just thinks of the next one and that it will be fine. I’m the one worrying about whether things will fit, will we be able to plug things in where we need them to, will the boiler be easy to use (old style with tank rather than the combi we are used to).
im scared we will move and all I’ll do is focus on the things that don’t work for me as well as they do in this house. Just simple things like cooking a meal, missing the view out our sunny garden. We are in our mid fifties and im so anxious about it all. I used to buy houses every few years in my 20’s and didn’t even ask a question after the initial viewing, I’d buy with my heart. This we’ve bought with our head.

Idk I don’t like my house at all and I’m just whiling away the time before I sell it. Life is too short to compromise in a house that doesn’t meet a lot of your needs.

You deserve the right one, even if that’s ‘eventually’.

Honestly, a shorter commute makes a huge difference to my every day quality of life. Maybe try to focus a little more on that, less traffic stress, less time in the car etc

Wait. The right one will come along

Yes we did.
It's been fine/good.
It was a "head house" overall I am pleased with it.

The reasons we picked it were solid. Location is good and matters a lot day to day. Our garden is NW but still gets a lot of sun so I wouldnt worry about that.

On storage i do recommend ottoman beds for adults and those raised desk/beds for kids.
Outlr house had Built in wardrobes which I was a bit meh about but they are really good for storage.

On plugs its not a big deal... run a spur or get an extension cable

You.do sound overly anxious.

We bought what we could afford that was on the market at the time... And the house we liked more ended up going for within budget. We've been stuck in this too-small, too much renovation-needed home for all our children's childhood now and it feels like wasted time. We're financially stuck here, likely will retire here, and we hate it. Buy a house you LOVE. Life's too short.

We bought a house 15 years ago because our flat was too small for us and we wanted another child and we weren't allowed pets in the flat (we had a human child and got a dog - the child isn't a pet!). It wasn't in a lovely area, it didn't have an attractive kitchen, it wasn't perfect but it was big enough and we could afford it. We're still there! We've decorated bits and bobs, grown into it and it's done us just fine. We've had a better quality of life for living in a home with a much lower mortgage than most of our mates have and it accidentally happened to be near good transport links, schools which have been amazing for us, and I'm glad we didn't keep hunting for perfection.

Due to a variety of circumstances surrounding my divorce I bought a house I'd only been able to view once and that had a bunch of structural issues which needed fixing before completion (which were done to be fair).
But I had no emotional attachments to the house at all as it had been quite a hassle purchasing and there had been very many pitfalls along the way.
I now love my house dearly and I am really pleased with how it's all turned out. The lack of attachment meant I was able to make quite rational decisions about it all. Good luck !!

I have, unfortunately, never had the luxury of falling in love with a house. Each time we have moved it has been for a job, with a time constraint as well usually. All of ours have had to be 'good enough'. The only thing I would say is if there is any non negotiable item then stick to it. I went from a detached to an end terrace to a semi and back to a detached. I didn't enjoy the middle two as much even though the houses themselves were lovely, just because we could hear the attached neighbours. Now we are looking at moving next for retirement and detached will be my non negotiable. In every other way we have made each house our home with decoration, the appropriate furniture, plants in the garden etc. I am sure it will be fine. I always cry when we leave a house just because of the time we have spent and the memories we have made there and the uncertainty of what is to come. It is just bricks and mortar really, what goes on inside is the important stuff.

Kind of @drakesqueen .....

I'll start by saying we've previously owned some stunning (imo!) houses - large/detached, kerb appeal, bursting with character in various parts of the UK.

But two years ago we found ourselves needing to move back closer to family on the south coast of England where everything is more expensive than our most recent location of rural Wales, where we'd renovated a detached 400 year old mill set in 0.5 acre of garden.

So we were expecting to downsize a bit, both inside and out. Having DIY renovated several houses, we were prepared to take on a large project. We also wanted a period home within close proximity to the beach 🙄

Not much fitted our requirements and we lost the only one we fell for as the vendor refused to accept it was hugely overpriced. It was in a terrible state but very pretty with four beds and sea views 😍 So we viewed one around the corner - a semi-detached three bed Georgian cottage last renovated in 1965. No sea view, but still two minutes walk from the seafront. It was a probate property and had been lived in by the PO since 1970. Nothing had been touched since - so far so good....

But I didn't get the feeling. DH, otoh, did - thinking it had bags of potential. Usually I can see potential but this time I couldn't as all the original features had gone - even the lime plaster! It had a smallish courtyard garden and an integral garage that used to be part of the habitable space.

As our buyers were keen to get in, we offered on the probate cottage and got it. At one stage we pulled out as I was having a wobble, but there was nothing else available and being mortgage free we didn't want to put our cash into a rental. So, eventually we went back to it and completed in Sept 2024. On moving day I was so unhappy - despite being desperate to move 'home', this didn't feel right.

We've been living on a building site since then and are gradually reconfiguring the cottage ourselves, putting character features back and making it 'ours'. DH - knowing I wasn't happy - agreed we'd sell it when finished (2027), but now, with everything starting to come together, I'm not so sure we will. It finally feels like home - a bit smaller than we'd hoped, but I'm used to that now...particularly since we converted two thirds of the garage to a boot room/office and opened up three tiny 1960s rooms to make a lovely snug!

It's also in a great location and since we completed I've kept my eye on RM and nothing better in our price range has come on the market, so I think we made the right decision after all.

This. When we moved to a new area we made offers on several houses that would do because we were so desperate to get settled. But luckily for us, all of those offers fell through. So we rented. then a house came on the market that I fell in love with the minute I stepped through the door, and it just got better and better. As we had already sold, we were in a strong position and our offer accepted, even though it was not the highest offer on the house.

That sounds like too many compromises for me OP. Especially the garden.