Was it the right move?

phoebe1989seb

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I think one thing here though is "happy with place" is going to be influenced by how much house prices are in the area you live in (ie how near its possible to get to what is required).

"Happy" houses are around £300,000 in my home area and hence the move. On the other hand, I've just been RightMove scanning on another area-I-think-I-would-like and "happy" houses are around £600,000:eek:. There aren't many areas of the country at all with "happy houses" at a price I can afford personally and I would suspect that's the case for many of us (particularly single people = that one income to buy with).

So that's certainly a relevant factor too.

So, I guess most of us get "best we can manage personally" houses.

This ^

Our former *forever* home that we sold after ten years sold again two years ago for £635k (around £50k more than we sold for in 2007), neighbouring houses are now selling at approx £750k and as I said previously, we couldn't afford to buy in that location now without taking out a mortgage, something we wouldn't be prepared to do having been mortgage-free for seven years.....

Were we to return to that area (my home city) as cash buyers we would only be able to buy something less than half the size of what we have here (new house is 2000 sq ft) and we wouldn't want that either

We also looked at other favourite areas (Marlborough and Farnham) and realised we'd get even less for our money there. I know it's all about *location location location*, but when you've been used to lots of space both inside (last house was 2500 sq ft and didn't feel massive compared to *forever* home) and outside (third of an acre at last house) plus we have two very bouncy, noisy dogs and three (much more sedate!) cats, the thought of squeezing into a teensy tiny terrace in order to have a beautifully appointed Georgian high street on the doorstep, not to say inflicting those dogs on cheek-by-jowl neighbours just didn't seem a viable option

I think we've made a decent compromise here and have ticked as many of the right boxes for us as we could in making our choice......

Davesnave

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

EDIT; DavesNave = I know exactly what you mean about things being a bit "wild". This whole area is more "wild" than I am used to personally. Personally...I'm used to much more varied and much "prettier" and I do miss both those things .

I can't understand this. The town you live in now might be fairly unremarkable, but apart from being on the Atlantic instead of the English Channel, so windier and wetter, the areas around both places are broadly similar. It's basically rolling farm land. The only thing that's markedly different is population in the two centres.

Both have National Parks very close by, and if Dartmoor isn't wild, well I don't know what is. Pretty wet up there too!

moneyistooshorttomention

The weather is part of it Dave.

I guess its the gardens on peoples homes too. There are always people who just totally neglect their gardens/do nowt with them wherever you are, but I've been used to seeing a noticeable number of "pretty" gardens. A very high proportion of gardens seem to have had vast majority of front garden paved over for parking and/or have cheap paving slab type stones over them. Can't quite put my finger on it...but they often don't seem to be as nice.

Still...will work hard on getting my own one sorted out to look good...must get out those gardening books again and start listing what plants I shall be having..and, you never know, it might encourage some other people to go "prettier"/more varied.

Davesnave

Ah, yes, Welsh concrete gardens. Say no more!

That's one factor people haven't mentioned though: the mental 'fit' with others in the locality. It can be crucially important.

Before we moved here, we rented, and it was in a more 'select' road than the one we'd come from, or that's what the general consensus was.

We had no problems whilst resident there. The first thing we did was throw an open house party to meet as many neighbours as we could, and a good number attended. It was all very 'pleasant,' but we were shocked at how many of them didn't know each other, even after 20 years. It was only a cul de sac of 20 houses.

At the end of our 9 months tenancy, we weren't even slightly sad to be leaving. Says it all, I'm afraid.

vroombroom

We completed on our first ever house in March last year.

We've been together almost 6 years and have rented 3 houses. The last house we were in was an small ex council with cheap rent, near OH's work and the preschool/primary we wanted our son to go to.

It was nice to begin with but over the winter it was freezing. There was no double glazing, the boiler was ancient and kept breaking, we had mice problems, cats poohing in the gardens, but the deciding factor to move was the fat, feral Jeremy Kyle style neighbour who moved in a few months prior. Fighting in the street drinking cans on the wall at 8am in the morning when I came home from nightshift, her aggressive dog and her equally aggressive, foul mouthed off spring, the old mattress and broken wardrobes in the garden, the fag butts, pizza boxes and empty cans in the street around her gate. Utter trash.

Anyway a mile down the road, the council were building new houses. We had kept an eye on their website and one morning after work last Xmas I was having a peruse and much to my astonishment - one listed for sale with a heavily reduced price. We went to view it that afternoon after my fella finished work. We loved it and put an offer and we got the keys about 11 weeks later as it was empty.

I love it. It's small and cosy, but has a driveway, a big garden and a lovely kitchen. It's smaller than the houses we have rented but it's soooo much cheaper to run! Plus it's meters away from our son's preschool and the school we have applied for him to go to. Our mortgage is fixed for 5 years till 2019 so we'll see then whether we stay or move x

moneyistooshorttomention

Davesnave wrote: »

Ah, yes, Welsh concrete gardens. Say no more!

That's one factor people haven't mentioned though: the mental 'fit' with others in the locality. It can be crucially important.

Before we moved here, we rented, and it was in a more 'select' road than the one we'd come from, or that's what the general consensus was.

We had no problems whilst resident there. The first thing we did was throw an open house party to meet as many neighbours as we could, and a good number attended. It was all very 'pleasant,' but we were shocked at how many of them didn't know each other, even after 20 years. It was only a cul de sac of 20 houses.

At the end of our 9 months tenancy, we weren't even slightly sad to be leaving. Says it all, I'm afraid.

T'aint just my thinking it then? re those concrete gardens. The most expensive houses here do seem to have normal gardens. I'm in a pretty decent area personally and very much one of the best bits here....but I do have to walk up the road past Really Expensive houses to see more normal gardens.

Like I said...hopefully I can start a trend for more normal gardens <fingers crossed>. I've pretty often noted I've been treated as a bit of a trendsetter in various respects in my life...so will stay positive/optimistic on that.

I am very used to "normal standard" houses (ie better ones than I had back when....) having conservatories and garden furniture in the gardens as standard and its only just struck me that mine is one of the few houses I can spot that's got garden furniture in it (maybe they all do...but its hidden from sight in back gardens I cant spot?). That's part of a garden isn't it? - ie to have furniture set out in it in order to be able to have a drink or meal outside in nice weather? Gardens as "outside rooms" and not just minimal maintenance and/or parking spaces? I don't think I've spotted a scrap of decking (tell a lie...I saw it once recently)/fashionable garden ornaments/deliberately wild and uncultivated look here yet and I guess that's why they look odd to me.