What would you do? Extend or move ?

[yogadeb]

I asked this a while back but thought id ask again for opinions as love hearing them...

Option 1)
Extend the 3 bed semi we live in ( can only get planning for a single storey) and would need to borrow £50k, but we would end up with beautiful ground floor , wet underfloor heating , bifolds , lantern roofs lights and high spec .
BUT son will go to a crappy senior school.
( although he wants to as his cousin will be going there too and we would get him a home tutor)


Option 2)
Borrow around 200k and move to a better school catchment area and get a larger detached 4 bed house with a ensuite maybe ( would love one) and possibly with a garage .( hubby would love one)

However ...
We are both wrong side of our 40s and have only 8 years left on our mortgage term but we have very nearly paid it off.
So if we borrow 50k to extend we will clear it in 2-3 years then have a lot of money to travel or whatever.
And if we move it’s a 20 year new mortgage commitment likely to force us to watch our spending much more .

Tbh we are both leaning to extending atm because of our age , but I get seduced by property some days love looking at houses for sale

[Pino_Spetzberg]

This is really easy.
Take an A4 sheet of paper.
Write down the positives and negatives for both options.
Take five minutes or so to reflect on the current economic situation.
Scrunch up the piece of paper and throw it in the bin.
Forget about it, have a glass of wine and watch The Chase.

[mitch84]

I’ve come to the conclusion that buying a property now with a 16% fall in house prices forecast by the BoE would not be very clever. So my advice would be definitely not to do that yet, and see what house prices do

[yogadeb]

Originally Posted by Pino_Spetzberg

This is really easy.
Take an A4 sheet of paper.
Write down the positives and negatives for both options.
Take five minutes or so to reflect on the current economic situation.
Scrunch up the piece of paper and throw it in the bin.
Forget about it, have a glass of wine and watch The Chase.

See more...

Lol 😂 the economic situation...that’s definatly one thing to consider isn’t it .
Love the idea of wine , don’t need no encouragement.

[yogadeb]

Originally Posted by mitch84

I’ve come to the conclusion that buying a property now with a 16% fall in house prices forecast by the BoE would not be very clever. So my advice would be definitely not to do that yet, and see what house prices do

See more...

Blimey is it really 16% .
Even reading back my post it sounds crazy to move ... I have to stop getting seduced by houses on rightmove though .

[Gryff]

3 years ago we looked at downsizing just/to a 3/4 bed bungalow so glad we stayed put and turned the house back to what it was when we bought it
A large 3bed Bungalow if you look at from the front and a 2 bed granny flat as DS and his son live in the bigger house and us in the flat we’d have killed each other by now otherwise in the current lockdown
An other thing to take into consistency is University fees in the not too distance future
Even the prospect of buying accomadation and renting out other rooms to help
I too would not buy right now

[Dazed]

I would definitely extend.

We bought a larger property 10 years ago when we were 31 & 35. We needed to because we have 5 children and were in an average size 3 bed property. Although we have a larger house now, my husband hates having the mortgage and is always talking about selling. If we had no mortgage he would much prefer it.

As someone who has done the big move, even though it was necessary, I would 100% extend given the choice.

[ClaireNJ]

Option 1 🙌
I’ve always thought it doesn’t matter so much about the school, but whether you’re child is capable, if they are ok they should perform well anywhere, one of my sons had extra help at Maths GCSE got A* totally worth it, he said without he’d have got a B probably.
You’re young & to pay mortgage off early would be great, with extra funds you could have a few tutors in different subjects if needed then 😉
Good luck xx

[catherinesian]

I would go for option 2.

Fall in house prices is good news for people upgrading their house (selling for lesser value than they are buying). Yes your house will go down in value but so will the house you are buying and crucially the gap will also go down. Crunch the numbers.

ETA; Having a detached house is pure bliss, we've just moved into a lovely spacious 5 bed detached house from our small 4 bed semi and the happiness I get every day from this house is more than worth the increase in mortgage. But we plan to stay here for a very long time.

[Jan]

I would be looking deeply into option 1, particularly the school situation and try to sort out something that works. If your son were to have home tutoring, would that put him ahead of other pupils in the school? If so, I can see little point in extra tutoring, unless he would need it to keep up with the others, of course.