Your comments wanted please

Cullumpster

Hello all,
right i know that you obviously won't be able to give me the correct information because you haven't seen my house, but i just wanted a little advise really.

I currently live in a normal 2 bed victorian terraced house close a town centre.
Now my b/f has just moved in with me, he has 2 children which he has between 3 and 4 nights a week, so my spare room now has been changed into the 'kids room'.

At the moment they are young enough to be having bunk beds, but obvoiusly this won't last much longer (1 girl and 1 boy!)

So basically in a couple of years time i will need to buy a bigger house (3 Bed).

Now i brought the house 5 years ago for £35,500 and remortgaged a couple of years back for £10k so i only owe say £46k on my house.

If i buy another house it is going to cost me around £100-£150k, so my question is, would it be more benificial for me to extend my house to a 3 bed, or to buy another house.

My b/f is a builder so i would not really need to worry about most of the work, but the only think is that he has just gone self employed so i think he will struggle to get a mortgage with me.

What do you guys think?? :-/

Slinky

I think a lot of this comes down to how much you like living where you are at the moment.

Do you like your neighbours?

Do you want the stress, hassle and cost of selling and buying somewhere else?

Do you want the stress and hassle of living in a building site?  Will your b/f treat this as a priority job bearing in mind presumably he'll be fitting this in around other paid-for work.  My friend and her builder husband split up after 10 years living in a house with no carpets downstairs, he still hadn't got around to completing the central heating piping, she'd had enough.

Have other people extended in a similar way in your street (i.e. set a planning precedent)?  Have you seen inside and like what they've done?  

If your circumstances had been different and you'd needed a 3 bed place when you bought the 2 bed, assuming money wasn't an issue, would you rather have had an extended 2 bed, or a purpose built 3 bed?

I'm sure other people can come up with more things to think about

Robert_Sterling_3

An old saying was "The cobbler's children are always the worst shod"

Cullumpster

An old saying was "The cobbler's children are always the worst shod"

Hmmm ....... nope i don't get it :-/

Slinky

Hmmm ....... nope i don't get it  :-/

The cobbler spent all day fixing other people's shoes for a living, but never got around to doing his family's shoes.

My friend's husband completed endless jobs for other people in the course of his work, but never got around to completing the most important job, making a decent home for his wife....

John_M_Business

Probably the answer to your question is in this kind of logic...

First - is it really possible to extend your place? If so, in which direction?
If you can't really extend without either:
a) Ending up with an awkward layout, or
b) Spending loads of cash
Then, don't do it!

Second, if an extension is viable, then factor in these costs...
a) What it would cost for your boyfriend to do the work, including materials, additional labour (add 25% for unknown costs)
b) Add his loss in earnings whilst doing the work for you
c) Add a redecoration (it's always worth doing this to a property if you've got the builders in)
d) Add any costs you may have due to the inconvenience (can you live on site? Will you need more take-aways? etc.)
What is this 'total'?

Third get a valuation done. (in fact, whatever happens, get a valuation done on the current value of the property and the incremental value of having the work done). And do some investigation: What is the DIFFERENCE between what your property is currently worth and a larger three-bed? If the DIFFERENCE is less than the total to do the work, then don't do it.

Finally, it may be that the best way of leveraging to a larger home is by doing work to your house and then selling it... but make sure that you're not inconveniencing yourselves for months to make a few hundred quid - you have to be certain it's worth it.

Don't worry about your outstanding 'debt' as it will always be there... also, don't worry about your boyfriends personal circumstances. If you have already been able to sustain a mortgage with payments (do it through your name) then your bank should look favourably upon you. Secondly I am assuming that you can put a healthy deposit down on a new place (difference between what you owe, and what your property is worth, minus moving costs (inc. Stamp duty)).

Hope this helps...