'Stretch yourself' - why?

Lauralou79

I wouldn't want to stretch tbh that's just me, but we bought in our late 30s so have afforded a good sized house in a nicer area. One I don't intend to leave for a long time.

I understand why people suggest or do it but to me it's also important to live a little. We could of gone 50/60 grand higher. But I'd rather experience life too.

It will depend on what your life and more shorter term goals are I guess!

jonnygee2

Our plan is already geared towards the long term rather than a 'starter home', it's just the £150k properties typically look like they need new kitchens/bathrooms whereas the £180k properties generally appear to have been done recently

If this is your choice, then definitely go for the 150k properties. In either choice, you'll want to replace the bathroom and kitchen before long anyway.

Most first time buyers are not able to buy their perfect home first time. They have to chose where to make sacrifices in either size or location, I think that's where the advice comes from.

But if you can find a house big enough to be a long term house, right in the area you want to live, then there's definitely no need to spend more just to get a nicer kitchen.


My personal experience - we had a choice of moving a bit further out, or staying put in Zone 2 London and paying about 50k extra, right at the top of affordability . Chose to stretch out the budget because the area is great. Just after moving I got a large payrise and my partner found a great freelance contract, and now we can afford the place easier. I'm so glad we didn't move out of the area we love.

Gwendo40

davidmcn wrote: »

Who are "these people" of whom you speak?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're people with a vested interest in property prices remaining high (i.e current homeowners) and will want to see others ''stretch themselves'' and take on probably an entire lifetime of mortgage debt to maintain current price levels..

haras_nosirrah

As the others say when saying stretch yourself they mean if you can afford a 'will do for 2-3 yr property' or for a bit more you can afford a 'will last 5-10 yr property' then go for the 5-10 yr one as you will miss moving costs. If both houses are at the same location, size and just one needs more work that the other I would go for the cheaper one and make it my own as long as I could see myself staying there for a decent level of time.

Marvel1

I didn't stretch myself, I live on my own and I don't regret not doing so(well a but as I don't like the house, way too small BUT I just think a roof over my head) for the last 10 years, in doing so I can afford to run my own car, and not worry about bills each month/year with increases.

SG27

haras_nosirrah wrote: »

As the others say when saying stretch yourself they mean if you can afford a 'will do for 2-3 yr property' or for a bit more you can afford a 'will last 5-10 yr property' then go for the 5-10 yr one as you will miss moving costs. If both houses are at the same location, size and just one needs more work that the other I would go for the cheaper one and make it my own as long as I could see myself staying there for a decent level of time.

Or wait and save for a bit longer for the 5-10 year house. No one should stretch themselves if its a stretch now then you cant really afford it, what rates go up another couple of %? You are in big trouble. Also no one should buy a house for 2-3 years it makes no sense. It costs far too much to buy and sell!

charlie792

Personally I think it’s about just finding a compromise between what you want and what you need whatever range that falls into your budget.
We live in a cheap part of the country and we were looking for houses anywhere between 80-140k. At the time 140k was our absolute max based on what we could borrow.
We looked at a few places for less than 100k that needed 25k+ work, houses already done up for £125k and somewhere that was 140k.
In the end we went for the 140k property because we didn’t have to make the kind of comprises we would have had to have made elsewhere.

We’ve been looking at moving again recently - our salaries are considerably higher now, we have a significant amount of equity in our property thanks to overpayments and increase in property prices and can borrower a lot more. We were looking between the 280-325k mark but just couldn’t find anything in that price range that ticked the boxes for our next lot of “must haves” and considered it just wasn’t worth the hassle or expense of moving to a more expensive property just because we could do so. We just recently remortgaged to stay put for at least another 5 years.

Just because you can afford more, doesn’t mean you need to spend more just for the sake of it, if your not really getting much more (what you consider important) for that money