Are you living in your "Forever Home"?

[Milliways]

Was watching "Location Location" this week, where someone had a £1M budget! We were talking about what we would buy if we were given £1M and HAD to spend it on property.

We both agreed that we would not want to move, but could spend a LOT of that money on really improving our home & getting the garden professionally done. Neither of us wish to move unless DH loses his job again & we cannot afford it - I would not starve myself/family for ANY property.

So - have you found your forever home? And if not, what would make it for you?

Not quite....but the compromise we could afford and i'm very happy. Enough bedrooms & reception rooms to last a grow with us as a family of 5, in a good-ish area.

But...if we won £1million i'd buy the same floorplan/layout/style....but next to the park and school on the other side of town, with a utility room, wooden not upvc windows.....and have a poncy interior designer come and do it up

Or a fab barn conversion somewhere and a villa abroad

Yes and no. If we stay with our current income and finances then I will be happy to live out my days here. There are 3 ideals missing though, we're a semi and would like to be in a detached, size of the garden (still a bit small) and a garage. But even if I had all the money in the world I wouldn't move if I couldn't move within the village we're already in.

Wickedwaterwitch: great that you finally found somewhere to buy. (Do you think you got it at the bottom of the market?)

A couple of months ago I would have said no, but now it's a "yes"

I greedily thought we'd like more space, as if we have friends round our dining room is awkwardly located and we get a bottleneck in the narrow hallway as people try to get into the kitchen or past the living room to get to the dining room. Friend's house came up for sale, which was ours plus double garage/office/bigger dining room/bigger 4th bedroom. Anyway, they got a cash offer, we couldn't get as much as we hoped so let it go. Was absolutely fed up. Then realised that we didn't actually NEED all the extras, so for half the cost of moving we are now putting a conservatory along the back to be the big entertaining dining room, the dining room will become an office and boxed toys/books storage which frees up more room in the youngest kids' bedrooms and means that DD3 can now have bedroom 4 as her own room (it's the office at the mo as DH works from home sometimes) AND we should have enough to re-do the kitchen so I can fit in a big American fridge freezer rather than the poxy under-the-worktop fridge I have at the moment and having to go to the back of the garage for the freezer.

Our neighbours are fab, not in your face but you know you could knock on anyone's door and they'd be happy to chat, or to do a favour. The children play outside (it's a cul de sac at the top of a hill so cars only come up slowly, and then only to get to our houses at the end). Garden is not v big, but big enough to have a swing and a playhouse plus some borders for pretty flowers when I remember to water them.

Only thing I'd change if I had a magic wand would be to resurface the motorway behind our house so it's a bit quieter! And flatten the hill cos the school run is easy on the way down but murder on the way back!

I love my life at the moment as you can tell...

I would love to have a forever home but we live in the north and dh has never really been happy here so even if we stay when the dcs are growing up we will move when we retire.

but we are very very lucky to have a nice house that feels big enough for our needs (just about).

Unfortunately I don't think £1m solves the problem! You just have a longer shopping list.

There are a £1m houses in our road (not ours! we're the carbuncle!) but I wouldn't live in any of them if I won the Lottery. Too big, bad layout, too near the road, too ugly, too this, too that, too the other.

Apparently Victoria Beckham couldn't find a house to suit in LA and she was wandering around with £15 million in her handbag.

Hi bibbitybobbetty, nah, reckon we paid what the vendor wanted because the house was perfect for us, we only got a paltry percentage off the asking...

£1m in the south east doesn't buy you that much, I will not even look to see what that buys in "up north"

A mahoosive house where i live 'up north'

I really hope never to move again. I certainly don't want to.

I lived in many, many houses growing up and then 5 properties before we settled here. We moved out for 7 months last year for a major renovation/extension but really were in a state of constant upheaval for 14 months.

We designed the house exactly as we want to live in it right now, so I would imagine as the DC grow up and away, we may need to rejig again, but we have a nice view, good plot etc so can't see the need to ever move unless anything awful happens.

No.

We are lifelong renters.

my house is wondeful, but there's always a bigger, better one...

actually, we talk about this a bit. to move to the bigger, better, we'd have to get a bigger mortgage, and if we had more money, i'd rather by a "bolt hole" in italy or france...

No. We need a second loo, walls (the open plan downstairs drives me mad) and a driveway. And to not be near a busy road because I want the dc's to be able to tear around outside when they are older.

Definitely not!!! It would make me sad to think that I was going to live in the same place for the rest of my life - no matter how lovely the house was! Life moves on, things change, jobs change etc etc so of course we'll move again. If nothing else DP and I have decided that we'll retire abroad (a few years away yet!)

Yes, when we bought we would have preferred to spend another £75000 but we'd have really really been stretching ourselves. We now say that we love the house, we're getting major stuff done (new windows, bathrooms etc) and we plan never to move. In fact we said that after moving in was such a nightmare - they left us with a gas leak, a non-plumbed in toilet, a crack in the window and vanished on moving day

Yes and No. I love the village and area where we are, and the basic house is fine. However, it is a bit too small but we're hoping to do an attic conversion, which will make the house a decent size for us.

Not yet.

For us, I've accepted, there's no such thing as forever. We were meant to move around.

Yes! We moved in in October and every day we both smile at each other and say how much we love our house. Its is fab fab fab fab fab. We stretched ourselves to buy it and haven't regretted it for one minute.

I love our house and location. We are just about finished on the 'doing up' and we have done the work expecting it to be long term BUT ideally we would have an extra 2 bed rooms(dds share and we could think about dc4). and a garden that is less over looked.

There is a similar but double fronted house up the street and we both agree if it comes on the market again we would seriously consider it. It was on a while ago when we were in no position to move and was totally spot on for us. It didn't sell so there is potential of it coming on again at some point.

nymphadora - you should "leaflet" them ( have been watching too much of Location, Location)

Bit scared they'd say yes! Need to free up our money before we do but may in a year or so depending on dc3 influencing the potential of dc4!

Ours was never meant to be forever, & is far from perfect, but we are still here 20+ years later & our kids have grown up here & love it, & there's a lot to be said for stability & long-term friends