We have no immediate plans to move. DH and I are in the aging parents stage of life and being close to our moms is important to us. It would take a lot to get us to move out of state at this point.
However, this is not our forever home. This is our for the next 10-15 years home. We've been here 10 already...time flies. Once DD graduates high school though we will start looking for other options. Our area is perfect for families with children. It will not be so perfect for empty nesters.
Post by samanthamkm on Mar 26, 2019 8:40:56 GMT -5
We are in our could be forever, die here home. It is a ranch style home with laundry located on the main floor. We live in a neighborhood with a mix of families. Some just starting out to the older parents that have grandkids already. It is also close to major shopping. Both of our parents live close enough. This house didn’t check everything off our want list but it checked enough. My husband and I look at listings often, but our must have list is pretty set and we won’t move unless the house checks all the boxes with one being in our school district. Our next move will probably be after the kids are grown and we move to the water.
Eta, for people who would never move. Do you like redoing parts of the home, like new kitchen, new bathrooms?
I think I feel about renovating the way you feel about moving: the process succcckkkss but the results are awesome.
We’ve always bought — not fixers, exactly, but houses that need a bit of cosmetic help. We improved them so much! I love having a bathroom that no one else has ever used except me.
Same! That might be part of the appeal for me. My kitchen and bathrooms were brand new and every detail was picked out by us. I really loved that. Looking now for a new house is painful, if it’s been renovated it’s either cheap materials or not our taste. It’s hard to find something that we love in a normal price range.
Post by jillybean222 on Mar 26, 2019 9:43:29 GMT -5
We've been in our house for 10 years already so I'm pretty convinced we are here to stay. H has a municipal job that our retirement it completely tied to (he has to work 20 years, he's in his 16th) but since 20 is right when we start college planning I don't see him retiring at that point. My parents lived in the same house for 40 years until they downsized and H's parents are still in the house he grew up in so the concept of a forever home isn't foreign to us. We will eventually downsize but not for many years.
I don't plan to stay in this house forever. It's a good house to raise children in. After the kids are out of the house, I want to downsize. We'll probably be in our current home maybe 20-25 years total.
We moved here planning for it to be our forever home. The previous two owners did the same, essentially, until one spouse remained and they downsized. It's well laid out for us as we age (not a ranch but master bed/bath is on the main floor), we're near family, and job options here are good.
I only see us moving if the neighborhood becomes unsafe (unlikely, it's been decent for 100 years) or if we have a child with special needs (we live in a shit school district).
This is a second marriage for both of us, so we've already done the "starter" home thing. We bought this house with the intention of staying until at least all of the kids graduate High School, which will be at the 10 year mark from when we purchased. In an ideal world, we'll move out further in to the country at that time, but right now, unless we get different jobs, that just won't be feasible because our commutes already suck. I think that I'd be okay staying here longer term, but I don't picture myself living out my golden years in this house.
Eta, for people who would never move. Do you like redoing parts of the home, like new kitchen, new bathrooms?
I think I feel about renovating the way you feel about moving: the process succcckkkss but the results are awesome.
We’ve always bought — not fixers, exactly, but houses that need a bit of cosmetic help. We improved them so much! I love having a bathroom that no one else has ever used except me.
I feel the same way. I actually like the process of renovating. We bought this house intending to do a bunch of updating (our kitchen and laundry room had huge makeovers within our first 6 months). We just opened up and redid the attic to make it more usable. We're in the process of updating light fixtures throughout, and our master bath is next on the list (adding a shower/tub combo because I looooove baths).
Post by stephogirl on Mar 26, 2019 10:34:41 GMT -5
The plan is to stay here until the kids graduate from high school/college/are semi "launched." Then we'll re-evaluate what we want to do. We'd love to relocate, hopefully with some less stressful jobs or jobs that are 100% online so we can live anywhere, and experience different parts of the country/world. Ideally, we'd have the house paid off and then we would rent it out and live 6-12 month stints in different locations, funded largely by the rental income.
I thought I was in my ‘until I’m old and retired’ house but then DH died and it was too big and expensive for me to run. So we moved into a house in a community about half a mile away. It’s a great family community and I can see staying here until I am too old for stairs.
Post by JayhawkGirl on Mar 26, 2019 11:05:02 GMT -5
This is our forever home, with hopes of a mountain cabin someday after this is paid off. We built it with this plan.
Once the kids are out of college, I can see us moving to a story & a half to get the full master on the main floor. But we do have a small bedroom on the main level that could buy us time here in that regard.
Also my parents live less than a mile away as of last year, which will be important as they age. I have the closer relationship than my sister, and their care will fall to me.
Post by lightbulbsun on Mar 26, 2019 11:16:53 GMT -5
H and I just moved last year into what we hope will be a house we can grow old in. It's a ranch, so only three stairs to get inside, and it has a nice size yard. It was pretty outdated, so we're hoping to make it exactly what we want over the next few years. We enjoy renovating and did a lot to our last house.
We do want to pay off the home but ideally we want to get a retirement/low maintenance home at some point on a island somewhere. DH has a theory that he can have his home in Dallas for his kids if they want to use it. I think he is nuts and one day we will end up selling our home. We are not interested in selling our current home even though we could and buy a bigger home. We rather spend that money on making the one we have nicer and then buy our second home elsewhere.
I'm already on my third home I've owned as an adult. This current house has been the one I've had the longest- 7 years. We are staying for now. If we are still in the house when my kids go to middle school then we *might* buy something else in the area with the same schools but it depends. It's always a possibility that we will move out of state with DHs job too so who knows but I would say this is not our forever home. It only seems like friends parents have stayed in their homes long term but the younger generations don't seem to do that. All our close friends have owned at least two homes on average I would say.
We bought our first house when we were 24/25, in 2006. Thought we’d live there for 3-4 years and then buy something bigger. The economy fell apart and we ended up stuck there for 8 years. It sucked. We lost so much money and barely scraped our way out.
Bought second house in 2014. I thought we’d live there “forever”. Our neighborhood prices shot up in spring of 2017 and we listed as a fluke, just to see if we could sell it. We got a full price, cash offer, the first day. It was insane. We made $140k in 3 years.
Sold that house quickly and moved into a rental house for 6 months so we’d have time to shop for a new house. I wanted a normal sized house with a pool, my husband wanted a huge house. We shopped for 6 months, looked at 50 houses, and couldn’t agree on anything. I said “I’m tired of looking, you pick”
Finally we bought a house that he loved. It’s growing on me, but it’s not my dream house, and doesn’t have a pool (wah wah). Right after we moved in, he’s already started looking at real estate again.
We’ve been here just over a year (January of 2018), finally all the way unpacked, getting art up on the walls, etc. It’s enough space that we could live here “forever” but I know if the right house came along, we’d sell quickly. We have a lot of equity already and it’s a beautiful house. I’m sure as soon as we get it perfectly how we want, we’ll move again 😂
Post by litskispeciality on Mar 26, 2019 12:44:01 GMT -5
Renovating vs. buying something upgraded...this depends on your area. In my area, my very limited area because of DH's job there aren't new houses and the old ones that you can even buy (hot, limited market) are overpriced and need a lot of work because they're old. I know you can't compare the actual love it or list it show to real life, but I have to use that as my do we spend a lot more buying something that will need upgrades, or upgrade what we have? What are we going to lose in the current house (garage, finished basement) for the luxury of an updated kitchen and a master bathroom...is that worth it? If we could move somewhere with newer/updated already done then I'd take that over doing improvements ourselves, however I'd have to see how much more we're talking per month. We've paid down a decent amount of our mortgage, so taking on a much bigger payment, with possibly higher taxes, only to get maybe 10 years out of those updates isn't appealing.
With that being said I don't understand the concept of "forever home" just in the sense of how do you know you'll always be there"? I could see we have 12 years while the kids are in school or whatever, but you never know where you'll end up. By default we're in a until we retire home because we can't move because of DH's job, so as I said above for us it's easier to keep upgrading, but it's a nightmare living through it and having one update a year for a lot of years.
On the other hand, is the concept of forever home rather new? I thought the "average" is that people move about every 7 years, but I wonder how true that is? Seems like a lot of work, and where are you going after your starter home (if you even had one) until your kids are grown or you retire or whatever? This is taking out people who move a lot for their job. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to move, it just seems like people I know in real life aren't moving that frequently.
On the other hand, is the concept of forever home rather new? I thought the "average" is that people move about every 7 years, but I wonder how true that is? Seems like a lot of work, and where are you going after your starter home (if you even had one) until your kids are grown or you retire or whatever? This is taking out people who move a lot for their job. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to move, it just seems like people I know in real life aren't moving that frequently.
In my experience the concept of a “forever home” is actually a thing more commonly done by our parents. Most of my parents friends have been in the same house from marriage to at least retirement. Some stay forever and some downsize but IMO both of those have lived in a forever home. I think it’s the younger people now that tend to move around more.
We're probably in our forever home. Barring any major life changes that would necessitate either "downgrading" our lifestyle or a relocation, this is pretty close to our dream home.
Eta, for people who would never move. Do you like redoing parts of the home, like new kitchen, new bathrooms?
The process of it is often a PITA, depending on the size of the project; but generally, yes. I like taking something that we don't like/doesn't suit us and putting the pieces together to make it what we want it to be. But I prefer that those changes be largely cosmetic, i.e., not major structural overhauls/reconfigurations.
In our first house, it took us a number of years before we got to a place where we had the means to do upgrades. In this house, we've been able to start right away with some small projects. Last year we re-did one of the bedrooms. Next is the bathroom that the kids share, which currently has (OMG!) hideous plaid wallpaper.
We bought our brand new "forever" home last year and are 99.9% sure it will remain that way. We made sure to make it liveable as we age and with both of us in stable long-term jobs we have no reason to relocate.
I’m in our forever home. But both of our jobs are most plentiful in this area so we aren’t moving for jobs ever. And since I love this area, it would have to be an amazing thing to get us to move.