Has Working From Home Changed How You Feel About Where You Live?

2020, The year everyone’s worlds got smaller, commutes shrunk and our houses became so much more than the place we came home to. For so many during lockdown, our homes became our worlds – our workplace, our social space, our gym, our everything. So whether the home we live in is the right forever space, became more important than ever.

But how has the change to our living circumstances impacted how we feel about where we call home?

Whether it’s made you realise you need more space, or maybe you have the space but it isn’t working for you in the right way anymore – here are some options to consider, to incorporate and embrace our ever changing lifestyles…

Changing The Way You Use Your Space

Pre lockdown, it felt like the height of interior chic was light and airy spaces, perfect for open plan living. Yet when busy households were thrown together 24/7, suddenly being able to close the door became a lot more appealing.

With the BBC reporting that most office workers won’t go back to work full time, it seems although the changes we hastily made last March felt temporary, a mix of hybrid working is here to stay. A study carried out by YouGov for the BBC reports that “A total of 70% of 1,684 people polled predicted that workers would “never return to offices at the same rate” and furthermore “The majority of workers said that they would prefer to work from home either full-time or at least some of the time.“

Personally lockdown meant a big change to our working life. We went from all four members of the family being out day to day, to suddenly two adults and two children all attempting to work and school from home together. We realised pretty quickly that noise was a problem in our open plan spaces.

After considering how we could create a separate space for working, last summer we had a little outbuilding in our garden converted to an office. This has been brilliant at providing a quiet dedicated space to work away from the noise and distraction of our home. The quickest way to create a home office is to simply repurpose an existing room. Yet not many have spare rooms that are not already being utilised. This leaves extending or creating new rooms, such as our garden office. Changes like this though do not come cheap – which is why many are considering using their mortgage to reconfigure their existing space.

But how do you know if you can afford to re-mortgage and what will be the impact on your monthly outgoings? There are websites designed to help with this. You can enter all your information and it will calculate your payment. You can then see how much this will increase what you need to pay each month, and whether that’s achievable.

Time To Move On?

Spending day in and day out in the same four walls in lockdown has been hard on us all. But for many, also the push they needed to assess whether the home they are in, is still right for them. Although there are a lot of changes you can make to many properties, many simply can’t be changed enough to accommodate what you are looking for. Plus if space and extra bedrooms are what you really need then often moving is the best option.

Before hopping on RightMove spending hours online curating your perfect wish list, it’s important to start off with a realistic budget. Looking into how much you can afford monthly so you are not over stretched – You need to start out with a realistic budget. its important to break down a total house price into what you can afford monthly taking into account your other outgoings.