I've sat here today, feeling frustrated about the house I live in. It's a nice house, we've made it our own and renovated it inside a lot over the last year (mostly before Squidge was born). We have a sunny south facing conservatory, and live in a quiet sleepy neighbourhood. Sounds good right?
While I'm ever grateful that we have a roof over our head, running water, electricity and that we're all healthy (seriously, these are things many people don't have), this house is also holding us back... we're effectively trapped here. For the first few years of owning this house, we were in negative equity and have only just recovered into profit.
We've always said we'd like 2 children. After having Squidge, I could even stretch that to 3, but for us to grow our family further, we'd have to move, there's no two ways about it. There's physically nowhere a cot could fit in the house, it's a tiny 2 bedroom terraced starter home. Our bedroom just has enough space to walk around the bed, and the nursery is a box room. My biological clock is ticking (I'm 36) so I don't have many baby-making years left, not safe ones at least. The way our house is situated, there's no room to add an extension either.
But in reality, today I've come to realise we may never have a second child, a realisation that has caused many tears today. For us to get a new mortgage, we'd need to pay off the massive unsecured loan that came with buying this house (yep, we had a sub-prime mortgage). And, according to the mortgage calculators I've tried today, we'd get a good 20k less as we're now a family of 3 (why?). Then take into consideration I'm having to go back to work part-time, so on a reduced wage, that leaves us with less than 100k in a mortgage, not enough to buy anything bigger than what we already have, even going right out of Cardiff...
That means the only hope we have of leaving this house, and growing our family, is something along the lines of a lottery win... I'd never even really considered not being able to have a baby #2, but now I just don't see any way we can possibly do that :(
Awr George I'm so sorry to read this, my sister is in a very similar situation though she does have two children, luckily their second room is big enough to fit two in (just about).
ReplyDeleteWould you ever consider coming further up the Valleys, probably not ideal but you can get a lot of decent houses in this area for the £100,000 mark, mostly two bed terraced houses but they usually have two huge bedrooms and a converted attic.
Leanne - A Slice of My Life Wales
I'm really, really upset to hear how disheartened you are, as your blog has been such a comfort and an inspiration to me since I fell pregnant. I really feel for you. We had a housing situation pre-baby. We lived in a starter home, 2 up two down. We wanted to move to a
ReplyDeleteWe wanted to move to a bigger place so we could start a family. But it took nearly 2 years of frustration, tears and putting plans on hold. We couldn’t sell our home for enough to afford what we needed to upgrade to in the area (an area we picked mainly because its family friendly and has good schools), while still keeping our mortgage payments affordable enough to be able to start a family. Prices were rising every month and it was getting further and further away from us. It was horrible and frustrating and we felt so trapped. Thankfully we managed to resolve it in the end, and managed to buy somewhere that needed a lot of renovation (not ideal with baby on the way, but we’re getting there…) because the landlord wanted a quick sale. One thing we seriously considered though was doing a loft conversion and/or rear extension to the old house, could that be an option for you?
I hope you find a way forward xx
Not really keen on the Valleys, but Barry is an option - lots of good more affordable houses there. I actually just called Santander and they do something called 'porting' where you move your mortgage and terms to a new house - we'd only need to add a little more, and if we increased the term of the mortgage a little, we'd be paying the same as we are now (actually very hopeful), we just need to sell our house first :) Things are looking up :)
ReplyDeleteThis must be so hard for you. Have you considered moving to another area or selling up and renting for a while? If you rent and have no mortgage when you are ready to buy you will be treated as a first time buyer again and may be able to take advantage of deals aimed at them like having your deposit subsidised. I hope you find a solution x
ReplyDeleteAww thank you for such kind words Sarah :) It's so hard isn't it (housing and homes). I'm so pleased to hear you managed to sort one out though, you must be so excited (minus the stress) though with the imminent arrival of your baby! No (re: loft conversion), the loft is tiny and is the only real storage space we have (our house is tiny), plus there'd be nowhere for stairs to go :) I have spoken to our mortgage provider since publishing this though and I think things may be looking up!
ReplyDeleteI've looked into selling and renting, but around here (Cardiff and surrounding areas) rent is higher than mortgage repayments, so we'd be worse off. I have spoken to our mortgage provider since writing this though and things are looking more promising, they do something called 'porting' - we wouldn't need to go through an entire mortgage application, we could move our mortgage with us... so ideally we'd sell our house, could possibly live with the inlaws for a bit, then go to buy a house as someone not in a chain :)
ReplyDeleteglad to hear you're feeling more positive now, things work theirselves out in the end!
ReplyDelete