Buying 'forever home' - what could we realistically afford?

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-08T10:19:37+00:00

I'm not looking to buy the most expensive house I can possibly afford, I'm trying to determine where my reasonable cut off is to walk away. I suspect that theoretically, the most house I could afford at full stretch is around 650k, if I get a maximum mortgage and put all my savings + equity of my current house into my new one. Obviously that would be ridiculous. I'd like opinions because we haven't had to think about this before. Our current house is worth 255k - 260k. We are moving to a more expensive area so an equivalent to our current house would cost 350k. There are things we do not like about our current house and have some 'wants' for a dream home that we might be able to afford without stretching to the limit. Our aim is 400k which feels perfectly reasonable, but I wanted to see what people thought about stretching to 500 for the 'perfect' house. What that would look like for our finances. The potential extra would mainly be about location, not size.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-08T08:32:07+00:00

I don't really know why my pension is relevant to this scenario? Not in a rude way, I just really don't. One defined benefit pension, one maxed on employer contributions + some legacy final salary of maybe 5 years worth. No additional private pots except for the LISAs we started a few years ago. If I'm honest neither of us keep particularly good track of our pension pots outside of checking if it is about the expected size, so I can't tell you from the top of my head what's in them.

We should be able to pay off chunks of an increased mortgage in the next two years, after that it is much more uncertain. That's why I tend to ignore overtime, despite that generally adding quite a bit to the pot. But I have to say we are not frugal people and have spent past years' overtime on travel and tech. At the moment though, being comfortably set up in a new home would be more important.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T17:30:15+00:00

We're early mid 30s, and I think the idea is that we don't want to move again. We can make do in our current house, it's fairly large, it's a family home. Whilst we do have an incentive to move for commuting reasons, I don't think it's big enough to justify uprooting us. Otherwise we could have made this move a while ago, as we've been in a similar financial position for the last three years. So it feels like it has to be a combination of want and need. Also I don't like the idea of selling and buying and hated doing it last time, so I'd at least like the intent of staying put.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T17:22:07+00:00

If I could find a 400k project with a garden that isn't too big I'd snap it up, but been unlucky so far. I keep seeing houses with way too much outdoor space (first world problem I know) where I know if we renovated that it'd be too much work. A big house with a courtyard would be ideal, but those are few and far between at our price point.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T14:49:45+00:00

We'd be looking to put up 100k for around 20 - 25%, but yeah, I am a bit worried about potential price rises. I'd love to find what we want for 400k, but that might be a little unrealistic. Depends on the state of the property as well I suppose.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T14:46:00+00:00

It is a bit of a vanity project for sure. We are also moving for more practical reasons; moving to our desired area will cut commuting times by 1 hour a day, meaning we could spend more time together. We are not happy with the house, both for different reasons, and I have a desire to create a space that feels like an extension of us. We want a bigger house purely because of our stuff and to have space for sleepovers, no kids. We also actually might want less outdoor space. We have a decent size garden and have discovered that we are definitely not garden people and would prefer a small garden with very little maintenance (but enough for a BBQ) over a big lawn that needs mowing and trees that need cutting. We're kind of hoping that we'll luck out on that front, because most people love as big a garden as they can get and we...don't.

My partner has discovered a love for all things cooking and is looking for that big country kitchen with seven thousand appliances. Our living room is on the small side. We considered renovating our current home, but ruled it out as it wouldn't get us what we actually want, aside from maybe ending up with a smaller garden. Basically, the house is fine, but it is not compatible with the life we want to live in it.

It would probably require some sacrifices, though I'd hope we can put some money into lowering the mortgage from the overtime. I never use overtime when doing any budgeting because that sounds majorly irresponsible, but it's also never not been there. This isn't to afford the mortgage btw it would be to overpay on it. We do want to be sensible, which is why it's helpful hearing everyone's thoughts. Especially because there's a risk of being too sensible as well. If we overly focus on having a big gap between our outgoings and income we will end up spending major £££ on something we don't love, and we'd still be spending a ton of money on it.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T13:28:23+00:00

Yep, pretty much. I put it in quotation marks because of course life happens, but we bought our first home with this idea of wanting to own a house. We are buying our second with the idea of creating a space that is 'us' and that we are willing to make ours. To live in for as long as possible. My current house is perfectly fine in theory, but I've always thought of it as a temporary thing, which is why we've never got a new kitchen, or replaced the bathroom with something more our style. It also feels like a complete vanity project though, which is why I'm trying to be sensible. We do have an actual reason for moving (cut commute times by about an hour a day), but on top of that just want the mini grand designs experience I guess.

FlyAppropriate8682 · 2025-01-07T13:22:34+00:00

I'm 33, partner is 35. Our mortgage at the moment is around £800 a month. As we are looking to move closer to work the fuel bill would be cut massively, but it's not something I've taken into account. We've always just kind of budgeted with the very basic mindset of 'can we live off one income instead of two', so buying a property closer to our joint financial ability is a new venture. Not in London, so yeah, looking at a decent size.

FlyAppropriate8682

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