Not sure whether to move to this house or stay put.

[GothDetective]

First of all apologies for how long this is going to be.

We currently live in an old 3-bed semi with a big garden in a large village. Village has a lot of facilities, shops, train station, on a bus route, big park, DD's friends all live in the village (she's nearly 9). DD's childminder is in the village as well.

However DD doesn't go to the village school as we took her out a year ago as we weren't happy with it and moved her to a school 3 miles away in a small village.

Now there is a row of houses in this small village that I've admired for 15 years as I've driven past and one of them is about to come on the market. Its a bigger house than ours downstairs, upstairs i about the same. Garden is the same size and there is a grage and workshop that we don't currently have. It's opposite DD's school. It is also likely to be about 20/30k cheaper than our current house even though its bigger. It will also be a much quieter location than our current house as we live on a busy High St. We also struggle with parking at the minute as we have 3 cars and only parking for 2 and we can't park on our street.

So it sounds fab - bigger house for less money. We know the current owners and have been inside so I know layout, etc would work for us. In a more peaceful, rural location closer to DD's school.

OK - the downsides.

Its a tiny village with one very small shop. Not on a bus route. So when DD is older she wouldn't just be able to walk to a friend's house or meet up in the park or catch the train into town. Is she going to hate me when she's a teenager if she's stuck out in the sticks? There are only 2 other girls in her year at school and I don't think either of htem live in the village.

Secondly (and I know some people will flame me for this). Its a semi and the other half of the semi is still a council house. As are most of the others in the row. Current neighbours are apparantly lovely but previous neighbours put the current owners through 2 years of hell. Police were involved, nervous breakdowns were had. Now I guess you can get the neighbours from hell anywhere but DH reckons you are more likely to get them in a council house than in a house that you're going to have to pay 200k for. I'm sure 99% of council tennants are lovely but afetr hearing the stories about previous tennents I'm just concerned.

That's it really. So would either of those 2 negatives put you off?

That's the toughie one! As your DD is 9 years old, do you know already where will be her secondary school?

Yes.

Your dd will hate you. And you will spend your entire life ferrying her around. She is nine. Time flies and soon she will be at secondary school anyway so being near to the primary school will be irrelevant.

Well the other thing is we live in one county but her primary school is in the next county.

So if we stay here we have the choice between using our location card and going to one of the primaries in the local town. Or we can still use her primary school as a reason to get into the secondary in the next county which is meant to be excellent.

Now if we moved she would only have the choice of the school in the next county. So if that school went down the pan, or she didn't like it for any reason then we'd be stuffed.

I'm a bit twitched though that if we stay then she won't get into this excellent secondary as we're not in the catchment. Their intake plan puts us at about No 7 in the priority list - ie; live out of catchment but go to a feeder primary. The head of the primary assures me we can get in if we want to as she says school not oversubscribed. But as reputation gets better will it be harder to get into?