Getting cold feet prior to exchange

AnotherJoe

Great suggestion letitbe

dgerrard

Thank you all for all your comments here.

I somewhat followed the most recent advice, and went though everything I've said in this thread with her.

I've calmed down a bit as well to be honest. One aspect that some posters picked up on: if we leave London, my wife would need to leave her job. Of the two of us, I work from home and have a much higher salary, but the company I work for is much less stable than hers is. Of the two of us, I would say that her job is more stable. It's not like I'm in a super-perilous situation or anything, as if I was I wouldn't be looking at houses in the first place. It's just that the company is about 5 years old as opposed to well established like my wife's is.

This has always been our problem really: we can either buy a really nice house outside of London comfortably on my one salary, with the minor possibility of losing my job (which let's face it, everybody has this possibility), or buy a worse more expensive house near London and my wife keeps her job.

She's not overly career minded, but she's happy where she is, and I fully admit that sometimes I just assume that she will be willing to chuck her job and rely on finding something new wherever we go.

We've been looking at houses for over 3 years now and never found anything that we were at all happy with, until this one, so the plan is to swallow my grand dreams and go for it. Although now the survey has turned up something wonky, which I've detailed here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/75772684#Comment_75772684

bouicca21

No decent restaurants, cafes, pubs within a 20 minute walk.

That's a deal breaker for me. I effectively work from home and there are times when the walls close in and you have to go out to a cafe or even just a supermarket.

mandragora_2

bouicca21 wrote: »

That's a deal breaker for me. I effectively work from home and there are times when the walls close in and you have to go out to a cafe or even just a supermarket.

then never move to the countryside....

Thrugelmir

dgerrard wrote: »

Areas purely suburban. No decent restaurants, cafes, pubs within a 20 minute walk. Where we are now, we’ve got three pubs and four nice restaurants all within 5 minute walk.

Location is a plus. Less likely to encounter anti social behaviour. 20 minute walk is likewise a plus. Healthy lifestyle.

Jigglebiz

It’s significant that you said you had similar doubts before moving in to your current property.
Are you an over thinker?
As others have pointed out, have you seen anything better within your budget?
Are you willing to make a big move to a different area?
To me, the biggest con of this place sounds like the location. That’s got to be a dealbreaker - location is everything.
Perhaps because you work from home, you are acutely aware that you could buy something better, somewhere else? Your wife, on the other hand, is constrained by needing to commute to her job. She may therefore be more willing to accept compromises on the house itself.

Albala

If you work from home, you do need a suitable space, and a house around it that you are happy in, as you spend all your working life there as well as your home life. I'm not sure that's always fully understood by people who 'go out to work', even if they try. Even a crummy workplace is a 'change' from home, and can make home seem better by comparison. Being stuck in a house you are not happy in virtually 24/7 is rough; it can be very depressing. As a self-employed person with many friends in the same sort of work situation, I know that the house environment affects people (for better or for worse) who work from home a lot more strongly than people who are in it for many hours fewer in the week.