Strategies for keeping hope going until house prices drop!

kunekune

After returning from overseas 18 months ago, we (me, dh, son of 8 and daughter of 6) have been living in rental accommodation. The town we are in was chosen because that's where we found the first rental (ie, mainly by chance). We moved on after a year to a town centre newbuild, mainly because of noise problems with the first house.

DH is adamant that we won't buy until the hpc has had an effect on prices. It's not that we can't afford anything at the moment, more that having been bitten by negative equity in the past (sold for $40K less than we bought, and had to borrow money to pay EA) he is not willing to take the risk. In my head, I know he is right. We are saving solidly, at least £1000 a month, so will have a reasonable though not large deposit for the next place (the international move cost us a lot of money and we sold in a low-price economy). The plan is a deposit of at least 15% and a mortgage of no more than 2x joint salary.

But my heart is finding this incredibly difficult. I worry about all sorts of things:

• We are on an AST until October, and I get scared we will have to move again then or after that at relatively short timing (for work reasons, it's difficult for me to take even a weekend off between September and April)
• This town is nice enough, but it isn't really where we want to live permanently,
• We want quite a big house but we also want a garden, and in this town that's unlikely to happen at a price we can easily afford. So it is likely that we will either have to compromise on something or that we'll have to move.
• I like this house in many ways but there are small niggles we can't do anything about because of the rental agreement.

This life feels insecure, a kind of limbo. I will admit that I am suffering from depression, hence the emphasis on worst case scenarios and going round and round the same thing again and again. What is needed is positive strategies, better ways of thinking, and things I can do to get through this.

ailuro2

Depression is awful, but what helped me was someone telling me to sort out what was coming from 'inside my head' and what was outside.

The 'outside' stuff can be worked on and used to ease the pain of the chemical imbalance that is depression.

In your case, you seem to feel defeated by your choice to return to the UK, against DH's wishes. Were the reasons to come back so strong that he didn't get a say in what happened, or did he not speak up about it at the time? It sounds like you are taking all the blame, but surely the decision was made jointly.

If you're not working as a team anymore, then you need to both get your act together and sit down and have a frank discussion about how you can improve your lot.

Make goals to stick to- wheh house prices have reduced by 'X' percent- you will buy a home.
Decide where you want to live.
Can DH retrain for something else now, to prevent being left without a job when he feels his 'best before' date has passed?

Not sure what else to say, really, but Good Luck, you need a big hug from DH, even if he's struggling too.

kunekune

It was my decision and he made it clear he wasn't happy, but he also knew there was a risk I'd come anyway. He made it clear that he was only following me (with the children) because he didn't want to lose me. I stupidly thought he would feel happier about it once we were here (he loves his real ale, not something you get in NZ) but except for occasional days, he is still miserable.

I don't know whether his career is in any danger really. It might be what he worries about on his bad days. He's been trying to find a better job (he is a data architect) without success, mainly because most of the jobs in his area are with consultancies requiring national mobility, and the combination of my own job (academic) and two young children, one disabled, means that it would be very difficult for him to be away all the time. He wants to get back into health IT but no-one will look at him because his experience is overseas - can't even phone the agencies, most don't actually give phone numbers! It's all a bit kafkaesque. Where he is at the moment is ok , although the money isn't good (shares in banks aren't exactly a bonus right now) and he is getting regular update training, but I suppose the trouble is that his is the first generation who worked in IT from their first job right through and it is difficult to know whether they will make it through to retirement.

Edited to add: when he got back from the bottlebank just now (newbuild = invisibility for recycling) he saw I'd been crying and gave me a big hug. I'm a bit hormonal, which never helps.

geekgirl

On a practical level you can put up freestanding shelves in the large cupboards you can get small and large sets, that should make storage and organisation easier. Would it help to get some nice freestanding picture frames and put up some well loved pictures of the family. As you are not able to decorate buy something affordable for each room that you really like and is a treat, it might be a nice lamp or something similar that may help you feel more at home.

My daughter lived for 3 years in rental homes and found it so restricting on making it 'hers'. She bought throws for the settees, some nice plants and then it felt more like home.

It is a good thing you recognise you are suffering with depression that is part of the battle!

You shouldn't be made to feel bad for ever for wanting to come back, OK it wasn't his decision originally but he did come back he has done it now get on with it.

Sounds like you have much more talking to do to find an area where you both want to live and to get clear whether you are both still aiming at the same goals.

Good luck, hope things improve for you soon.

conradmum

Maybe it's time to admit you made a mistake and go back to NZ? You both sound miserable here. Your children are still young enough to make the move again without longterm repercussions, and whatever was making you unhappy about living in NZ you can try to put right on your return.

There are plenty of people leaving for NZ, but not many coming the other way!

I think you should both also look at how you work together in your relationship. You seem to have twisted his arm to come here, and now he's punishing you for it. If you want to change your lives together in a dramatic way, there needs to be wholehearted agreement from both parties, not agreement with the proviso that you'll endlessly blame the other person for the decision if things don't go perfectly. And an agreement brought about by emotional blackmail is no agreement at all. Sorry to sound harsh, but this is one of the reasons you're both unhappy.

kunekune

deleted, posted twice

kunekune

Emotional blackmail is a strong way of putting it, though I suspect it would seem like that from outside, especially the way I phrased it - but it was a huge dilemma. I do think that NZ is seen as the holy grail by many who haven't actually lived there - low houseprices are a bit of a myth once you factor in low wages and very high interest rates (currently hovering between 10 and 11%). The reality in a small, remote country isn't quite what it can seem.

My work environment was toxic, I was extremely unhappy and had no chance of a move within NZ because nowhere else I could work had work that DH could do. Advancement in my career depended on getting an international reputation, and that needed conferences, but they weren't fully funded. People who were ambitious had to top it up from their not-so-wonderful salaries. It was also hard on the family to jet off a couple of times a year for a week or more.

Yes, it does sound like "it's all me" but then the same could be made of the counter-argument that DH would have mounted - I like this house, I like this job and I don't want change. So it's not so much that I think it was a mistake - I don't expect each decision I make to be perfect, there are always going to be aspects of a decision that could have been better. There are many positives of the choice made (and he didn't veto it, in the end).

It's more that the current living situation puts us in a kind of limbo. My suspicion is that until we make a commitment to where we live now, we will continue to waste a lot of mental energy on what might have been, what other parallel worlds we cold be living in. But, because of the state of the market for houses, limbo is precisely where a sensible person stays.

I should add that DH and myself have been together for nearly 28 years and we've got through bad patches before. It's pretty solid, really, and neither of us would throw that away. I was a bit over-emotional this morning, but I do know what to do, I am just finding it hard to let my head rule my heart when I've got the deep nesting instinct to paint walls, put up shelves and plant veges (can't even do that here).

neas

I feel for you . Im a FTB but am waiting for the HPC, because i've read of the pitfalls of buyin at the peak of the market... It makes sense to save money when houses arent rising .

BTW whats DH mean? I know OH means other half... always wanted to ask. It shouldn't be about the area you live in, all that matters should be you are togther.

Treat every day as your last and every night as your first.

elona

neas

DH is Dear Husband.

I can sympathise with people who feel in limbo as we have had our house up for sale for about eight months now and have lost the house we really wanted.

DH put loads of stuff in storage so DDs rooms are a bit "bare" and this house now feels less like ours if you know what I mean.

Gingernutmeg

Kunekune, I know how you feel. OH and I moved last September because we couldn't afford to stay in our last flat, and we neither of us like the area that we've moved to. We've had nothing but problems with the house and finding work, and it's put a huge strain on our relationship. People really do underestimate how stressful moving is, and how restricting renting can be. We're currently having problems with our letting agency, and OH was almost in tears last night as he's so stressed and fed up with it - I'm the type that'll moan and rant, and I sometimes forget that OH feels it as much as I do, but doesn't let it out. Living somewhere you don't like can make everything else seem worse, it's easy to blame it all on that, but I think you have to be realistic about what you can and can't, for the moment, change.

It has got me down a lot, particularly as I feel very 'trapped' in the new area, and I'll admit that it's really been a struggle to keep positive. I've had to really change my attitude to how I'm living, and where I am. It really has helped me to view 'now' as a stepping stone to something else - it's amazing how helpful repeating 'it's not forever' can be lol! Also, I think you just have to 'get over' the fact that you're renting - yes, it's not secure and it's not 'home', but for me, I couldn't live constantly reminding myself of that. I'm making a real effort to do things around the house and garden - for obvious reasons I'm spending as little cash as possible but it's a real way of making somewhere feel like mine, and home. So I've made curtains and cushions, done things in the garden and repainted the bathroom - despite all of the hassle with the house we do have a LL who admits that we really couldn't make the house worse lol, and they don't really give a monkeys what we do. Even having little things that are my choice in the house makes a difference. In our last flat, we couldn't do *anything*, but I still changed the curtains, put pots etc on the balcony and made it 'mine', as far as I could. That's my way of dealing with the reality of renting ... I think you have to focus on today, plan for tomorrow but don't obsess about it. It helps me.

tsstss7

kunekune wrote: »

• I like this house in many ways but there are small niggles we can't do anything about because of the rental agreement. Because this is a newbuild, the walls are all magnolia, and painted with thin trade paint that shows every mark. There are no picture hooks and the good-sized cupboards have no shelves in them. We have pictures ... none of them can go up.

Hi can't really help with your bigger problems but you could try these for hanging smaller piccies - I bought some recently and was pleasantly surprised by how well they worked.

http://www.3moutletstore.co.uk/storefrontprofiles/processfeed.aspx?sfid=89497&i=171752566&mpid=7744&dfid=1


hope you are feeling more positive today.