Moving Home During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Our everyday lives have been thrown into confusion and disarray over the last twelve months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Everything that we have considered normal through our lives such as going on holidays abroad, going to the park with our children, working out at the gym or going on a family shopping trip or an outing to the cinema, farm or anywhere have been put on hold while the world deals with the pandemic. There is no doubt that there is a light at the end of the tunnel as vaccination programs are rolled out, but we are still a long way off returning to life as we knew it before March of 2020.

One of the biggest changes to our lives has been that we are spending more and more time in our homes due to lockdown and a lot of that time is being spent together as a family as our children have been unable to attend school. This is when you really find out how big your home is. This is even more obvious if you are working from home and homeschooling.

The one sector of business that has seen an increase in business is the housing market. Many people have decided to move home to larger properties as they find with everybody at home there is simply not enough room. Moving home to a bigger property can be expensive and it’s important that you do your homework that you can afford to make that move.

Here are a few key pointers when deciding to make a move to have more room for your family.

1. Mortgage

The biggest cost for people when buying their own home is a mortgage so it’s very important once you have decided which property you would like to purchase to get an approximate amount of how much your monthly mortgage repayments will be. You can do this by using a mortgage calculator. These are readily available online and very simple to use.

2. Finding a new property

Once you have decided that you can afford to move to a bigger property, now the task is to find a property that is your new forever home. It’s important to take into account the area as house prices moving upwards is a big question so make sure the area is a growth area in house prices. It’s important to check out the catchment area for schools so your children have the best possible education.

3. The New home

You have found the perfect home so now it’s now time to do some research on how much it’s going to cost to live there. It’s important to check out if the property is freehold or leasehold. If it’s leasehold you will be faced with an annual fee (you can learn more here on leasehold properties). It’s also important to find out how much land tax per annum it is and, as it will probably be a larger house, how much approximately your energy costs will be.

4. Interest Rate and Fixed term

When deciding on a mortgage it is also very important to decide what type of mortgage you want whether it’s interest only and will the monthly repayments be on a fixed term and how long for. Interest rates are dictated by the Bank of England and then lenders decide how much their interest rate will be by the Bank of England’s interest rate.

Finally after doing your research and homework and working out your affordability levels you can go ahead and purchase your new home.

Hopefully this will mean that the children all get their own bedrooms or now that you are working from home due to the pandemic you can have your own office, somewhere peaceful to concentrate on your work.

The housing market has definitely seen an increase in people moving homes during the pandemic as we change our lifestyles to be based more around the home and especially as more and more people are now taking the decision to work from home.

Have you moved home during the pandemic? I would love to hear your experiences in the comments below.