Last month marked our five year anniversary of living in this house and although I still stalk Right Move at regular intervals during the year, I do love living here and can’t see us moving any time soon.
It’s a new build house that we bought while it was still being built so we got to choose all the fixtures and fittings and once it got to a certain stage of the build, the developers were happy for me to just pop in and wander around while I pretended that I needed to measure something but really just wanted to see the house again, just to imagine what it would be like with us living in it. In fact, it really was just a shell the first time they let me in but I had a feeling straight away that it was going to be a happy family home and I’m pleased that I wan’t wrong.
It’s not perfect by any means though. For starters, it’s smaller than we wanted but we made the decision to go smaller and have extra money left over each month for us instead of buying at the top end of our budget and potentially struggling. I haven’t regretted the decision we made but I do crave a little extra space from time to time.
The garden is also a little smaller than we’ve had before – especially when you factor in the football goal and the 10 foot trampoline! But apart from those little moans, everything else about the house is just perfect for us so I’m pleased we made the decision to buy the less expensive house.
At one point we even thought about renting a house as there was a lovely house to rent near where we wanted to be and it was beautiful and decorated exactly as I would have done myself. It was a former show home and the rent per month was cheaper than the mortgage repayments would have been on a smaller house.
Have you ever been tied between renting and buying?
There are lots of pros and cons to each in my opinion but the decider for us was the fact that the payments we would be making on a mortgage would be reducing the amount we owed on a house that would be all ours one day. And like for like, the payments on a mortgage are not that different to paying rent. If you’re thinking of saving up for a home of your own but aren’t sure if it will be cheaper than renting, take a look at TSB’s mortgage repayment calculator to see how much your repayments would be.
This post is in collaboration with TSB
