My plan is to sell up in around 7 or 8 years and head off to the coast, where it's a damn sight cheaper.

I sense that some of you reading that are perhaps gawping at the expense, especially relative to the size and amenities. Within five years of purchase, the real estate market here exploded and our house more than doubled in value. We renovated in 2021, mostly expanding the second floor, adding a full bathroom up there and putting a second full bathroom in the basement, and today it is worth a few hundred thousand less than that palace JB shared at the start of this thread. It’s a much bigger space than it used to be, but our house is definitely not palace sized.

Sometimes I fantasize about what it’d be like to one day sell this house and move far, far away from this high-cost-of-living city, where we could almost certainly live in a home twice the size at half the price. Oh well, maybe in 15 years after we’ve retired.