julicorn's journey 2 - Moving Up

Karmacat

Yep, the Portslade one is a long way out - and you've still got a bigger walk to get to the train station to get to Hove or Brighton.  The house has some lovely original features though!

Marlborough Mews - the location is fantastic, in a tiny cul de sac in the centre of everything!  Very interesting.

Thing is, the "work" has been done on all of them (I can see a few bits on the Portslade house, but nothing major), so that's priced in.  If you want to work from home, though, you have to do that - I didn't think of that when I bought fixer uppers both times I bought a house in Brighton, so everything sort of deteriorated around me!

My first house was in Hanover - by a pub, with no front garden at all, so you're very exposed to passers-by chatting at the tops of their voices at 3am Whether you're going to the train station or to town, you're walking up a steep hill, it got old 

Good luck with the search!  Definitely a great idea to see as many as you can.

julicorn

Cheers @Karmacat! We'd definitely need to add some sort of central heating system to the Portslade one, otherwise I won't make it through the winter haha. Portslade isn't particularly high up on our list in general, but we're trying to keep an open mind. 

The hill in Hanover is quite something, we're kind of keeping our fingers crossed for something that isn't totally on top of the world haha. We used to live near Seven Dials, not as steep but still a fair bit of a hill from Western Road. The worst thing was that we also lived on the third floor of a Georgian terrace, so once you'd made it up the hill, you still had 72 steps to get into the flat I used to joke that that's the kind of thing they put up warning signs for on towers, so tourist don't bitte off more than they can chew. 

LadyGnome

Oh I love looking at properties - good luck with your search.  As well as the official viewings I would go back to the area in the evening and see if it's noisy and if it's somewhere you would be comfortable walking home to in the dark.  Have a think if there are schools or other locations that will lead to a lot of traffic and footfall unless that doesn't bother you.  

My preference is the Hove house but then again I have two large teens so I am always thinking of space.  We have lived in a 1 bed (seriously!) and a 2 bed flat with 2 children and its not easy.  So if you think your family might grow at some point I would plan for that.  When we moved to our current 4 bed house we didn't know what had hit us.  

Also think about how you would like to use the space.  What is your flat stopping you doing now, if anything?  I have a dedicated office space as I wfh a lot.  Mr G has a lot of tools so a garage is a must.  We cook quite a lot of spicy food so having the kitchen separate from the sitting room is preferable.  The boys are into fitness so our smallest bedroom is now a home gym.

julicorn

Thanks so much for your comment @LadyGnome! The going back in the evening is a great idea, and I'll have a look at nearby schools as well - Mr julicorn used to live near a primary school and that was always quite noisy, so this is an excellent point. 

We are thinking of having a child in the next few years, but want to just have the one ideally (after 10 years of not really planning on having kids at all, so it's a bit of a 'if it works out, great, if not, then not' kind of situation). More space would definitely make more sense, especially in that case, I suppose the question is is the house nice enough to compromise on space quite a lot.... and is it workable at all?

Thinking about how we'd use it and what the flat is stopping us from doing now, is an excellent shout. Off the top of my head:
- We'd really like to grow some more of our own food. At the moment our garden is more of a small patio, not bad for our size of flat, but walled so it's been really hard to grow anything at all. We've grown some tomatoes, potatoes and herbs over the last few years and that has been great, but had to stick with grow bags and a tiny greenhouse shelf for those. We've had our name on an allotment waiting list for 3 years now, but it is also quite far away from where we are - it would be nice to be able to have some beds for veggies in our own garden. 
- Generally having a bit more of an outside living space would be lovely, I love hosting barbecues and garden parties every now and then, but we're very limited with how many people we can have along atm. 
- Mr julicorn quite likes restoring old racing bikes, and would really like a bike shed and/or tool shed. He's also interested in making beer, so again a shed would go a long way. 
- We don't really have space to have people stay over atm. It'd be a very occasional thing, but some sort of day bed / sofa bed would be very useful to have. 
- We like to cook, and our current kitchen is absolutely minuscule and quite a bit away from the living area, which can feel a little isolating. We're hoping for something a bit more open plan, so we can have a bit of a chat while cooking dinner. A bit more space would be good too, so I can make bread while cooking dinner for example. 
- A dining table - we don't have space for one atm, and it would be nice to have space for us and a few friends to eat together sometimes. 
- We currently have all our clothes in one IKEA chest of drawers plus a single clothes rail. We don't need loads more clothes storage space than that (when we've had too much in the past, I filled it up with loads of clothes I never wore), but it's definitely a bit of a squeeze atm, quite literally. 

Things we really like about our current flat:
- The living room is really nice and big, which makes it quite a flexible space. 
- It has lovely features and high ceilings. 
- It's quite central, which means I often spontaneously invite friends around after meeting them in town or after a couple of drinks. 

Nichelette

julicorn said:

This is super handy @Nichelette, thank you for sharing all that info and your floor plan too! That's a lot of bathrooms as well for a 2 bed. Must be quite tricky with you both working from home, with us it's 'just' me (apart from a short stint during the first lockdown), but having more flexibility would always be a good thing, especially when we can afford it (and I'm just being ridiculous and want the super cute super dinky twitten cottage for whatever reason)

It was built in 2003 right as things were going mad, and we're a 5 minute walk from a direct train to London, so honestly I think it was built with renting in mind. The people who owned it from new before we bought it used it for that purpose. The extra bathroom is lovely and I think I'd struggle without it now because it's really handy when getting ready in the morning, but having known no different before I'd have preferred only one and a bigger bedroom! 

It's not ridiculous, it's lovely! It's just a good thing to try and think with heart and a bit of head too  

LadyGnome

I think home buying has to be a combination of head and heart.  I feel like the twitten house is all heart.  You love the character of the place but I'm not sure it will actually allow you to live the way you want to live.  You are spending a huge amount of money so the property has to support the life you want on a practical level as well as an emotional one.  I live in London so I've had to think the same way.  Property is so expensive that moving has to be a considered choice as it would take a while before moving again in the same location would be possible.  

julicorn

LadyGnome said:

I think home buying has to be a combination of head and heart.  I feel like the twitten house is all heart.  You love the character of the place but I'm not sure it will actually allow you to live the way you want to live.  You are spending a huge amount of money so the property has to support the life you want on a practical level as well as an emotional one.  I live in London so I've had to think the same way.  Property is so expensive that moving has to be a considered choice as it would take a while before moving again in the same location would be possible.  

See you say that, but to me that house ticks all those points I made above more so than other houses that aren't super far out. The Hove house is nice, but the 'garden' is probably about the same as we have now, which means gardening/bike tinkering/beer making/garden get-togethers are about as limited as they are in our current flat. Mr julicorn's commute would take twice as long as well.
I'm not saying you're not all making good points, but I quite like the idea of living simpler, but somewhere that really suits our lifestyle. 

julicorn

Speaking of 'further out' though, we have booked another viewing in Portslade this weekend: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/108081194#/

We've also written quite an amusing list of scoring criteria to take on our viewings, we're both quite into our spreadsheets haha! Gonna have to dig out some clipboards to make it extra official. 

Sistergold

Simple living is not a bad idea @julicorn. Most of the time we need more space to accommodate unnecessary possessions! Being close to everything is also very important. I am 3 minutes from the train station, best thing I ever did for when I want to use the train. Also close to shops and not too far from the town centre very convenient. A garden is important especially if you love growing your own. 

julicorn

Thanks @Sistergold! I think even just across your posts I've got an excellent list of pros and cons together, it's honestly super useful and gets me thinking. 

With houses going so quickly at the moment, it feels like I'm having to do so much more homework upfront so that we can make a decision quickly. When we bought our flat, we negotiated back and forth for about 2 weeks, while still viewing other properties. I think our flat was the 4th one we saw and we really knew it was the one. We viewed another 5 or 6 afterwards, but none of them even came close. But at least seeing those other flats helped us feel confident in slowly increasing our offer, because it was just the right place for us.
Partially I think it's giving up the flat we are in now that's making me consider what I loved about it in the first place, and the outside space (albeit smaller than what you get with a house), the character and the location were a big draw. The kitchen we have now is about a quarter of the size of the one we had before, but weirdly it's easier to use (the previous one was a galley kitchen with a bit of an awkward layout). So yeah, I think part of me is struggling to let go of what we have at the moment