wonderingaloud

Hey,

We havent yet put our house on the market yet but are looking to soon. We have had the house valued at approx 15k less than what we brought it for 2 years ago, so pretty gutted, but partly expected. To try and rekindle the loss we are planning on living with my parents rent/bill free for 6 months after its sold to save up and then go with some money in the bank. Everyone keeps saying we must be mad, but because we have a fixed rate for another 3 years yet, we are tied into paying the mortgage, which over 3 years is a lot more than what we would have lost on the house. Plus I cant see the house prices shooting up dramatically any time soon if we were to hang on to it for 3 years.

I am obviously trying to justify this through looking at the siuation with rose tinted glasses!

Any one else in a similar position?

And then of course its a pretty huge gamble to move to oz having never been to the area we are condidering...

Centurion

Can't really see a flaw in your financial logic, despite how depressing it is for you.

What I can tell you is that every single poster on this board had doubts at some point about migration. Its the biggest change you can make in your life and to be just a wee bit scared of it all for various reasons is par of the course.

Best of luck in your decision.

MartinH

Of couse what you really want is someone to tell you its absolutely the right thing to do....only you can know that. However, were you to stay put for three years then not onmly might the house price recover but the exchange rate might also move in your favour.

So it depends how old you are and how desperate you are to go. Maybe splurge on a visit to Oz to see it for what is really is (you may not like what you see)

Oh and if it makes you feel better, we lost around 75,000 to go in the other direction

Kapri

Can you rent it out?

wonderingaloud

No cant rent- our lender wont let us, we dont own enough percentage of the house- only brought it 2 years ago....

75,000 to go the other way- you mean from Oz to Uk?

Was it realy that bad?

Mochinbach

Woah! I think you're in exactly the same position we were in a year ago. It sounds like you bought at about the same time too! We bought a house in March 08 and then sold it in July 09 for £30,000 less than we bought it for. (GULP). We lived in SA for just under 12months in 07. It was supposed to be a 12 month adventure to get the idea out of our system. We moved back to the UK at the end of it to get married, settle down and have kids. By "we" I mean me and my now husband (He's Welsh not Aussie an I'm a Midlander). We bought a lovely house in a little village in Warwickshire and went back to our old jobs, got married and didn't feel right at all.

Like you, we were faced with the fact that we'd bought a house and then the market crashed. We had a lot of talks about it and in the end we lost a lot more than we ever expected. It was very stressful! The thing is we knew that we didn't belong there. It was too late and we needed to do it otherwise we'd always be thinking "WHAT IF" and that's no way to live your life! We sold it. We bought it for 242000 and sold it for 214000 and lost all our deposit and savings as a result. It costs money to sell a house

We did exactly what you are planning though and moved in with my parents for 6 months rent free. Together we saved just under £15,000 which almost compensated.

If we'd have waited for the market we'd still be there and probably still tearing ourselves up trying to work out what to do. IN our opinion it's just money! Money isn't all that important when you're thinking about your future and you know you'll be able to get work etc the other end. We're both relatively young (29) and have a good skills set. we've both got work and a nice rental place in Adelaide now. We even moved out cats out and so far (it's been 2 months) we have no regrets. We're happy and thinking about starting a family.

I can't tell you what to do. Like the other posters have said it all comes down to how you feel. it's a really hard decision to make. I'd advise that you make sure that what ever decision you make you know you won't have any regrets. Everyone told us we were bonkers and couldn't understand but to be honest that, in itself, is understandable - they often don't have the same understanding of the situation. At the end of the day, all that matters is what you need/want out of life. As long as you can make enough money when you get here then nothing is forever anyway. You can always move back. It's a pain in the arse (!! but it is do able!

I hope those ramblings help in some way.

bluekipper

Very inspiring & positive post, I agree with everything you say, `its only money` you will always get enough- when your back at work in OZ, Ive come to the conclusion we`re never gonna be rich, but what i do know is we will (hopefully) be ok, enough to pay our way so to speak, and for me, thats enough!!!!

Good Luck

Bluekipper

wonderingaloud

Thanks so much for your reply, it's just nice to know were not the only ones who have considered doing this. I guess the only flaw i our plan is that you guys lived in Adelaide already so you knew what you were giving up your house etc for.
We considered NZ a year ago and even went last november for 3 weeks, and whilst we loved it, the ultimate reason we wanted to escape the UK was down to the weather and NZ unfortunately is very simlar to the UK, as we discovered when we went, I did not take off my fleece the entire time we were there!

We toyed with Oz as well (although at that time we realy thought NZ was for us) and on the way stopped in Melbourne for 5 days, maybe we were jetlagged I dont know but it just didnt tick the boxes for us, were not city people and the weather in November was not what we expected for australia- it was sooo windy and realy cold! Very naive of us realy. Anyway when we got back we decided that we needed the weather, Melbourne didnt seem to have it (too many extremes it seems) NZ didnt have it, (plus I would have taken a pretty big pay cut working in NZ,) So we got back to basics of why we wanted to move, to be able to live by the sea, plan things in summer knowing that the weather wont let you down, not having to de ice your car in winter, just generally be abit more outdoorsy instead of being cooked up inside all the time, and now we are looking at Queensland- only problem there is it might be a bit too hot!

Anyway sorry for the ramble! That is our situation in a nutshell lol. We are extremely confused lol but aspiring to better things.

MartinH

Yes to go from Oz but not back to the UK we went back to Germany. We bought at the wrong time and then the market dived. In reality the more sensible thing to do would have been to rent until we were sure we liked it....but not all decisions are made on a wholly rational basis.

Of course it makes you choke a little but we were in the fortunate position of having enough money to swallow the loss and in any event the house we bought back in Germany had fallen in value by significantly more. so swings and roundabouts.

Money is a very transient thing (yes, I know easy to say if you have it) but life is a countdown clock - once you have made a decision there is no point in delaying as every day is another days wasted.

We are very we made the move - it was a good experience if nothing else than to get it out of our system.

Mochinbach

Well... If you're looking for a city near the beach where Summer is summer and there's no ice on your car then come to Adelaide I've never had Ice on my car (but i don't live in the hills...) and i am 5 blocks from the beach, 20 mins from thecity, 5 mins from a mall!

Good luck with your decision making.