Relocating to be mortgage free

Jill4

I'm considering selling my home in dublin to buy a cheaper house in the country and be mortgage free. I'm in my 40s and like the idea of a quieter life and being debt free. Has anybody else done this and can you offer any advise? Thanks

dev100

Jill4 wrote:

I'm considering selling my home in dublin to buy a cheaper house in the country and be mortgage free. I'm in my 40s and like the idea of a quieter life and being debt free. Has anybody else done this and can you offer any advise? Thanks

What about your work situation and family situation and what type of equity do you have in your Dublin home ?

Ms2011

We're doing what you're thinking of doing. Bought a doer upper 2 years ago for cash an hour outside Dublin, have been doing it up over the past 2 years & we're finally moving in on Saturday.
Sold our house in Dublin & cleared the mortgage leaving us mortgage free.

Ms2011

Ms2011 wrote: »

We're doing what you're thinking of doing. Bought a doer upper 2 years ago for cash an hour outside Dublin, have been doing it up over the past 2 years & we're finally moving in on Saturday.
Sold our house in Dublin & cleared the mortgage leaving us mortgage free.

Congratulations. Must be a great feeling

Ms2011

Jake1 wrote: »

Congratulations. Must be a great feeling

Thank you, I don't think it'll hit us until we spend our first night there

shakencat

We have been thinking of this for the last few months, nearly went sale agreed at christmas and we chickened out...

Im 29, just unsure of being outside of dublin with no family and friends..

I do know i can make friends, but obviously dublin girl in me is a bit afraid..


Where are you thinking of moving to?

TresGats

Hoping to this also, move from a semi-d in a Dublin estate to a cottage somewhere scenic. - Cork, Kerry, or Galway. I have family in Kilkenny & Laois, but I think I'd like to live near the sea. Love to hear how you get on, everyone. I'm just looking at properties atm online, property in my estate has literally gone up 40k in the past year, giving me more options. Good luck!

shakencat

TresGats wrote: »

Hoping to this also, move from a semi-d in a Dublin estate to a cottage somewhere scenic. - Cork, Kerry, or Galway. I have family in Kilkenny & Laois, but I think I'd like to live near the sea. Love to hear how you get on, everyone. I'm just looking at properties atm online, property in my estate has literally gone up 40k in the past year, giving me more options. Good luck!

We'll both be still working in Dublin, but not during rush hour, so for me its just deciding how far id like to go, so hard to know what to do!

Jill4

Im not too concerned about work as the industry i work in has desperate shortages of staff in dublin never mind outside dublin so im confident I'll walk into a job. Same for my husband. Have no children so dont have to take schools etc into consideration. Just wondering if in the long run ill regret leaving the city for the quiet life. I dont think ill miss the rat race but i wonder if it'll be a novelty for a while and then ill get bored!

Jill4

Sorry... thinking of buying in lonford/roscommon . Would have about 150k to purchase a property

Del2005

Jill4 wrote: »

Im not too concerned about work as the industry i work in has desperate shortages of staff in dublin never mind outside dublin so im confident I'll walk into a job. Same for my husband. Have no children so dont have to take schools etc into consideration. Just wondering if in the long run ill regret leaving the city for the quiet life. I dont think ill miss the rat race but i wonder if it'll be a novelty for a while and then ill get bored!

Rent a cottage where you are considering moving for a few weeks in January. Then see if you still want to live in the countryside.

Sausage dog

What do you like about living in Dublin? Can you list the advantages? Maybe a large town in another county will provide you with most of the same things you like about Dublin. Perhaps spent a night or two in different places over the next few weeks to get a feel for some towns & areas outside of Dublin. Look at them as potential areas to live in, not just for a night away. Talk to the locals etc.

myshirt

Do you like cutting grass and maintaining s garden?

Mightn't be an obvious one, but nevertheless one to think through.

jamesthepeach

I know a few people who have done this over the years. All but one couple are very happy with the move.
The one couple just don't like the countryside and miss Dublin desperately but have told me that what they have found once you move out to the country from Dublin, it's infinitely harder to move the other way as it's a significant trade upwards instead of down. And over time that difference between Dublin house prices and country prices will get bigger and bigger.

So by all means it's a nice experience for most people, just be sure it's for you, because it's most likely a one way trip once you release the equity in the Dublin house.

I know someone considering this at the moment but the other way round they are selling a large house in a sought after rural area to move in to an urban area, its to do with illness and future proofing their life, they will make a large amount on the transaction and will probably buy something in Spain as well. They are hesitant because they are so use to the country side.

There is a lot of maintenance on a large house and big gardens.

DoozerT6

Hoping to do this myself soon. Budget would be limited, but if it meant I was mortgage free and could afford to save a few extra quid a month, at some stage maybe I could trade up again, with what I've saved+the cost of the property I'd be selling.

LirW

We just did it. In our case it was more a question of we have a huge deposit but wouldn't meet lending criteria (one stay-at-home parent). Decided to go that route, since he can relocate job fairly easy and I'm planning to pick up my work at the home office again within the next year.
It feels absolutely amazing, there were a few compromises but in the end we own that place now.
It's not too big, just the right size (3bed and attic converted) and a smaller garden for a rural area.

Sleeper12

Jill4 wrote:

I'm considering selling my home in dublin to buy a cheaper house in the country and be mortgage free. I'm in my 40s and like the idea of a quieter life and being debt free. Has anybody else done this and can you offer any advise? Thanks

Friends of mine did this about 12 years ago. Moved to Mulingar. He lost the job a year later and has been able to get work since. He could have full time work if still living in Dublin. They love it down there in fairness

Jill4

Thank you all for your replies. We put our house on the market today. We've decided to go with it. Turns out the agent thinks we'll get substantially more than we expected which will leave us very comfortable.the market is heating up in Dublin and we're ready to take advantage Sometimes you just have to take risks otherwise you'll never know! The glass is always half full for me. Will keep you posted thanks

bennyineire

Sounds exiting, best of luck
Have you considered Offaly, lots of cheap options within 10 miles of Tullamore, motorways and railways close by and only 1 hour from Dublin

Mirror game

Lots of people have moved into my area(3hrs from Dublin) over the last few years not only from Dublin but also London and other European cities. Most were cash buyers and got a great deal on well finished houses.
If it's a .5 acre site. Roughly €900 a year will get get all garden work done.
Moving within a few miles of a large town is a lot easier than going to a very rural location better again if its a tourist/scenic spot.

Anyone thinking of it should consider a few things, if you have children mover to a rural area nears a town with a secondary school most but not all teenagers hate living in the countryside parents often end up as a constant taxi so if you are near enough to a town with a secondary school they will be able to meet up with their friends its a bonus. The cost of paying for accommodation college is a big issue as well.

On the other hand hand services are often cheaper every thing from child care to hairdressing to yoga classes. There wont be the massive waiting lists to get in to the scouts and the like schools will be smaller.

Emme

mariaalice wrote: »

On the other hand hand services are often cheaper every thing from child care to hairdressing to yoga classes. There wont be the massive waiting lists to get in to the scouts and the like schools will be smaller.

Yoga classes can be more expensive in the country. I moved from Dublin to a rural area and everything health/fitness related from the gym to yoga and pilates classes are more expensive. The gym is overcrowded with poor facilities and overcrowded yoga and pilates classes are held in a parish hall. The people organising them know there is no competition and they hike the prices accordingly.

People in the countryside can be very cliquey and unfriendly. I agree that being mortgage free is very attractive but think carefully about moving out of the city. Once you leave you cannot go back and if you don't like where you are you are stuck and have to put up with it.

Well it was just one persons experience they found everything cheaper, if the person is the type to think urban life is the bees knees and they are only moving to be mortgage free it is probably not a good idea, also where you move to has an influence as well some where like west Cork is going to have a different ambience that the midlands for example.

secman

I'm in the lucky position of living and working in Dublin Mon to Fri. Have a house in wexford 2.5 times the size of dublin house. Relatively small mortgage on Dublin house at this stage. But I'm still happy with the current set up. Having both really allows you to get best out of both and appreciate both. Friends of ours were in exact same position but sold dublin house 2 years ago. Wexford home is no longer a bolt hole retreat, they now go away long weekends and do miss dublin too. Another reason for me is , in Dublin I am 3 to 5 min away from a major hospital, wexford would be 35- 40 mins.
As someone else said very hard to reverse it. I would seriously consider renting out Dublin home and rent rurally before I would sell dublin home. I know a guy doing exactly this. Getting 1500 pm in Dublin and is paying 700 in wexford.

Good luck to all considering these options.

silly_move

silly_move wrote: »

unless the mortgage was a struggle , i would not do it , unless you are of country " stock " or have relatives in a rural area , you are an alien to the locals , never underestimate the clannishness of rural ireland

That why it better to consider an area that has attracted a lot of outsiders already and or has a tourist element places like that tend to be more cosmopolitanism.

MSVforever

mariaalice wrote: »

That why it better to consider an area that has attracted a lot of outsiders already and or has a tourist element places like that tend to be more cosmopolitanism.

Which areas would be cosmopolitan apart from Dublin and Cork? Maybe Galway or Limerick?

Emme

MSVforever wrote: »

Which areas would be cosmopolitan apart from Dublin and Cork? Maybe Galway or Limerick?

Westport in Mayo and Youghal in Cork are quite cosmopolitan with a lot of foreign settlers.

MSVforever

MSVforever wrote: »

Which areas would be cosmopolitan apart from Dublin and Cork? Maybe Galway or Limerick?

It is amazing the views some people have of the Ireland outside of Dublin or other large urban areas.

LirW

MSVforever wrote: »

Which areas would be cosmopolitan apart from Dublin and Cork? Maybe Galway or Limerick?

Most parts of Wicklow are very cosmopolitan too.

Mirror game

bennyineire wrote: »

Have you considered Offaly, lots of cheap options within 10 miles of Tullamore, motorways and railways close by and only 1 hour from Dublin

The 1hr from Dublin is a big plus but I wouldn't go for here as the place itself is a gateway town and wouldn't have much to offer in itself.

Emme wrote: »

Westport in Mayo and Youghal in Cork are quite cosmopolitan with a lot of foreign settlers.

I like both of these they're both tourist towns, in other words a place people actually want to be in.
Even though prices in both places are cheap I'd go for Youghal as it's only 50km to cork on a good road. Only drawback is they both a bit on the small side 6k-7K.

MSVforever

mariaalice wrote: »

It is amazing the views some people have of the Ireland outside of Dublin or other large urban areas.

It's a genuine question. As a previous poster mentioned people in the countryside can be very cliquish and make it difficult for "blow ins" to be accepted.

Darkglasses

I have lived in several different areas outside Dublin and never once felt there was an issue with being a blow in.

James 007

MSVforever wrote: »

It's a genuine question. As a previous poster mentioned people in the countryside can be very cliquish and make it difficult for "blow ins" to be accepted.

And people from Dublin can be very cliquish and make it difficult for "Culchies" to be accepted.

I wonder is it an Irish thing the ideas that all life revolves around a big city in .i.e Dublin and to a lesser extent Cork Galway and Limerick and rural areas are odd and clannish. My brother and sister in law in the UK have moved a few time for work around the UK, its very common nobody thinks anything of it.

spare_change

youghall is a poor choice , that town was doing better in 1987 than 2017 , its a town of past glories

were i to move to any place outside of dublin , it would be limerick city , its absurdly cheap for an urban area of its size , as recent as two years ago , it was 40% cheaper for a house than galway city despite being the same size , its about 30% cheaper today than galway , its cheaper than any town in meath , kildare or wicklow with a population of more than five thousand

spare_change

marialice , the brits are different to us , new zealand is like you described in the uk , even in rural areas , people take no notice of each other , you could have a dutch or south african guy buying a sheep or dairy farm in rural new zealand and nothing would be thought of it , that doesnt happen here , the upside is that rural communities are more tight knit but only for locals or people who are of " stock "

Mirror game

MSVforever wrote: »

It's a genuine question. As a previous poster mentioned people in the countryside can be very cliquish and make it difficult for "blow ins" to be accepted.

What is meant by "the countryside" because outside of Dublin and it's commuter towns, I reckon the vast majority of people in the ROI live in, Cork, Limerick, Galway their commuter towns and then roughly the top 1 or 2 towns in each county. You couldn't be a "blow in " if you tried in any of these places. So what are talking about when the say "blow ins"?
Even if you took a town with say 1o thousand people it would have thousands more within 10/15mins drive of that town. I don't know but you'd have hundreds possibly even a thousand moving into and away from such an Urban center each year.
Someone above mentioned difficulty with going exercise classes and I'm sure that kinda thing is an issue in some places but for the vast majority who live outside Dublin it isn't an issue also the vast majority who live outside Dublin wouldn't move into a place like that in a million years.

Mirror game

spare_change wrote: »

youghall is a poor choice , that town was doing better in 1987 than 2017 , its a town of past glories

were i to move to any place outside of dublin , it would be limerick city , its absurdly cheap for an urban area of its size , as recent as two years ago , it was 40% cheaper for a house than galway city despite being the same size , its about 30% cheaper today than galway , its cheaper than any town in meath , kildare or wicklow with a population of more than five thousand

Agreed, a nice area of Limerick or some of the surrounding towns would be a good move and very affordable. One of the main reasons and a very important consideration is 3rd level education as this is one problem that comes at people fast. Finding suitable work is also gonna be much easier being near Limerick.
I know a couple who were living in a house the guy had inherited in the north-side of Dublin. They were very close to taking out €200,000 to do a Dermot Bannon job on the house but decided against it in the end.Because they were both working ****ty jobs they sold the house as it was and bought a business + very modest accommodation down the country before their children started school.
They didn't have a clue starting out but because the didn't have many expenses the were able make a real go of the business over the last year, making much more then their previous jobs. They're now already on the hunt for a new dream home.

CelticRambler

We did it fourteen years ago, albeit in a more drastic fashion, moving country too. We took the children out of smalll city school at the end of October 2003, exchanged contracts a day or two later, and bought mortgage free in the "middle of nowhere" a few months later.

More than a decade later, it was definitely the best decision we could have made. Sure, there were compromises and consequences arising from the move, but when I look at hectic lives of my city-dwelling siblings, I have no desire to go back to that way of living. Any lingering doubts on that score were thoroughly killed off earlier this year when I did a series of short-term contracts in a similar environment - listening to so many of my work colleagues complain about how they were up to their eyeballs in debt (mainly mortgage) and needed all the hours of work they could get.

I listened in on a conversation between one of my sisters and one of my cousins a few years back, on the topic of choosing schools. My sister (Dublin-dweller) was talking about the challenge of trying to get a place in the "best" school; my cousin (who happens to live in the Longford-Roscommon area) remarked that she didn't have that stress - all the children went to the one and only local school and that was that (same way ours did, in France). Her eldest son and mine both ended up getting their first choice courses in UCD.

When it comes to travelling and transport, yes, you need to be independent, but our experience has been that you'll also find the actual travel times aren't really an awful lot different. As a jealous city resident once remarked to me, in the time it takes me to get from my appartment to the ground floor and down the road to the bus-stop, you're already half-way to your destination!

As long as you don't expect to lead a city lifestyle out in the sticks, it can be every bit as fulfilling (and that goes for teenagers too!)

It depends on where you are planning to live, there are some places in rural Ireland I would not want to live if I had the choice.

Woodbrook80

Thinking of doing this I live in bray and could move back to Galway and be mortgage free working on my husband his bit reluctant due to jobs

shakencat

want to spark this thread back up...
any changes in anyones life?


We're back looking at this again....

Electric Sheep

Emme wrote: »

People in the countryside can be very cliquey and unfriendly. I agree that being mortgage free is very attractive but think carefully about moving out of the city. Once you leave you cannot go back and if you don't like where you are you are stuck and have to put up with it.

Depending on how rural an area you move to, you may find that the local GAA club is the only social outlet. This happened to friends of mine, and they HATE GAA.

conor05

I think if work allowed there is no better county in Ireland than Kerry to move to and I am from the North East of Leinster.

It has everything (well jobs maybe an issue for some), airprort, trains, Good hospital, Tralee IT and not far from UCC in Cork or UL in Limerick.

You could literally pick something different to do every weekend in Kerry from April until September and not get bored.

I actually find the people down there so much warmer and friendlier than up here. It’s almost like they never experienced the Celtic tiger and so still kept their old traditional Irish ways of life.
I would love to move down there full time.

North Kerry in places like Ballyheigue,Banna, Ballyduff and Ballybunion be ideal locations.
You have fabulous blue flag gold sand beaches, gaelic, Hurling and surfing.

House prices are reasonable outside of Dingle and Killarney both are expensive.

If I could convince the Fiancée and child I would move tomorrow!

Grumpypants

Electric Sheep wrote: »

Depending on how rural an area you move to, you may find that the local GAA club is the only social outlet. This happened to friends of mine, and they HATE GAA.

I lived in the city subburb for 3 years and ive been in a rural setting now for three years. The city years we only got to talking terms with one person in the whole estate. Everyone came home from work and scurried into their houses. There was nothing to do bar the pub.

Now i live on a 8 houses mile stretch and nothing but fields all round. 3km from the nearest little village. It couldnt get more rural, And we know everyone, we have kids birthdays, drinks, bbqs. You walk up the road and it can take two hours as your having chats and cups of tea. At the end of the summer we have a big pig on a spit mini festival.

We've two great primary and secondary schools with no waiting lists. Soccer, hockey, gaa, sailing, playgrounds, art gallerys, yoga, farmers markets and i can be at the beach surfing in 35mins.

Commute to work in the city takes 20mins.

The quality of life is the main draw.