When you first get on the housing ladder you usually start with somewhere small and affordable and then at some point when you’ve had kids or start earning more money you might either outgrow your current home or decide you want to move somewhere different. Some people might repeat this step a few times before finally looking for their forever home although others might get lucky on their first buy and end up with somewhere they never want to leave.
When you are looking for your forever home you want to make sure that it either has everything you are looking for or has the scope to make changes to it one day when you have a bit more spare cash, www.frugalfamily.co.uk give some great tips on how to save money when improving your home.
Obviously everyone’s needs are slightly different but some of the main things I would consider when buying a house that I wanted to stay in forever would be…
Parking
We both have cars, well Matt actually has a van which is a large vehicle so parking for us is really important. I think especially when you have kids you need to be able to park close to your house, in a drive ideally. We’ve looked at houses before where you park on a road then have to walk up a long path to get to the property, this would just be a no for me even if I loved the house. Carrying shopping and young kids to the house in the rain would stress me right out! Equally having to park on a road without a guaranteed space would stress me out too. Obviously if you live in a city these things aren’t always possible to avoid though.
Is there a downstairs toilet?
We currently only have one toilet and there are four of us living here and it is guaranteed that as soon as I get into the bath one of the kids will need to use it!! So a forever home for me would definitely have more than one toilet.
A spacious living space
I’m not bothered about having a massive house or even big bedrooms as they are just for sleeping but having a living space where everyone can chill out and a nice big table for everyone to sit around is really important to me.
A good sized garden
I love summer and as we don’t get that much nice weather in this country being able to go outside and enjoy it when we do is mega important to me so for that reason having a garden is vital. Ideally I wouldn’t want it to be too overlooked either, no-one wants their neighbours being able to look out their window and see them sunbathing!
Thick walls
Having noisy neighbours would make a house you love quickly become a nightmare so having well built walls that contain the noise is important, equally as a two way thing too. I always worry in summer than people can hear me yelling at the kids to go to sleep at night!!
Room to extend
If you love the house and hope to one day have money to do some work to it then knowing there is room for you to do that work gives you something to look forward to. I have always wanted a conservatory so knowing there was space to build one at some point would make me feel happy that we could stay in the house forever.
Suitable to grow old in
If you really want to live in your house forever then you need to think about whether it can be adapted to suit you as you get much older. Can the bathroom be adapted? Are there any difficult to navigate steps to walk down to get to the front door? What kind of staircase is there and would it be suitable for a stairlift one day? Obviously models for straight stairlifts are the easiest but most staircases should okay, although maybe not the narrow spiral types!
So these are just a few of the things I would consider but obviously everyone is different and some of these might be more or less important to you.
‘Collaborative Post’
