We are hoping to actually buy this year for the first time, after years of being convinced it wasn't possible - things have fallen into place and to be honest the insecurity of renting/costs (we have a decent landlady, but it's never ours forever) really worries me to the extent that it's been affecting my mental health quite a bit. (We've already discounted leasehold places because from everything I understand the same worries are going to be there in the background - no idea how costs will rise, the headache of extending leases etc, still needing permission for certain things). At some point I want to be able to retire, we need a change of scene, and the past couple of years have made it a lot more important to be able to get to our parents' quickly, and now we've got the deposit, the remote working agreement so we don't need to change address and jobs in one go, and a couple of other things we were waiting to sort out sorted, so it could....actually happen?
Been trying to get my head around the whole process, but most fora I've looked on assume you're buying with one eye on the "property ladder" whereas I just want somewhere to live and to know nobody's going to ask me to move from it again. I really couldn't give a stuff about building equity or up and coming areas, I just want to know I'm in the same place this time next year and get to paint the walls whatever colour I want. I've had 15 different addresses since I left home and I'm just done with it. My attitude is that anywhere we buy in our budget will be at least as, or less, crappy than anywhere we could afford to rent where we live now, but it's still daunting!
The complicated bit is that we're moving from one end of the country to another so I have not a clue how the search process is going to work, really.