AIBU to be gutted my house has lost me money?

Near us, the new houses have v low deposits and some are shared ownership. Young families are another rung up the ladder.

"youngsters want houses now,"
How are they getting them, houses are so expensive?

Good point, you pay interest on the losses from a mortgage purchase, unless you have a hefty deposit?

Sounds like you massively overpaid when you bought it op.

you made an investment, in property

Flats have bottomed out where we live. Ours is worth the same as 6 years ago - youngsters want houses now, older people don't want stairs and nobody wants management fees that can rocket. To us, it's our home so we're not thst bothered but for anyone who bought as an investment. ......

Upkeep of a property is important though, but if you’re viewing it as an asset, rather than your home, you’d normally temper what you spend by calculating the value you will add before making costly and unrecoverable improvements.
Most people investing more than that in their home, do it because they are creating the best environment for their desired lifestyle.

As we are also now mortgage-free, and have had our “money’s worth“ from our investments made in it over the past few decades, we now spend regularly and cautiously in order to maintain our home at a standard that would mean that, if we were to sell up, our house wouldn’t be at risk of the dreaded EA “in need of modernisation“ observation, which IME, means “you can knock £20+ thousand off the asking price”.
You pays your money and you takes your choice!

If it had been invested in the S and P 500 it would have double in value. That includes the covid plummet.

The OP is right though, she has lost in real terms taking into account inflation. However as others have said it is your home, not an investment & you still have the initial investment. I’d move now & nor wait.

Maybe? Maybe not?

But you would have lost money spent on rent

I sympathise OP as I too have had to sell at a loss many years ago and it was a hard slog for me repaying that money as I went into rented.
Your question was should I sell now, and based on what you have said, my answer would be yes.
The fact is the property does not suit what you now realise you require from a property.
Move on and do consider moving to an area where you are more likely to see an increase in value. I think the real mistake would be to buy in this currently stagnant area again.

Housing does not follow inflation.
Depends on house or flat area etc.
Op had family trust buy other half so not same as a share to buy or help to buy
Op is and was in very nice position with no mortgage and should stop moaning

Not sure about OP's calculations but, accordingly to the bank of England, in order for a 650k house in 2017 to maintain its value despite of inflation, it would need to be evaluated to be worth in 2025 around 850k, so around 200k more.

Bring a leasehold, it is unlikely that her 50 per cent mortgage was that much though.
However, she might be factoring in the cost of 8 years of partial rent plus variable service charges. That could work be 100k.

To be frank leaseholds, rent to buy, partial mortgages are just yet another trick to extract money from people who cannot afford the mental mortgages in London.
And the profits all go to ultimately to corporations.
One needs to read the conditions very attentively and be prepared to be cheated, it is not an equivalent to buying a house, more a way to perhaps recover after lots of efforts part of the money paid towards the so called mortgage. It might or not be cheaper than renting.

Yeah I have to agree with you.

OP - I think you need to be a bit more grateful and not focus on ‘losing £200k’.

You are extremely fortunate to be in the position you are in.

Don't be ridiculous, of courses you can, you literally said you redecorated and put in new kitchens and bathrooms and such in your opening post to 'live there happily'. You have some mild limitations compared to an outright owner but its nothing like renting.

I rent a house where our bathroom isn't even fit for purpose, the floor has rotted through and collapsed and there is NOTHING we can do about it, its been raised flagged and flagged again. Even the owner of the management company was shocked how unsafe it is but landlord won't sign off on any work. He gets round it by repetitively sending new builders to quote (so he is 'acting') but never instructing the work.

We cannot move to another rental as rent has increase so much for new contracts it would be unaffordable. Although we are lucky enough to be buying so won't be here much long however 2 houses have fallen through costing us 2 years of being stuck here.

You are in a wildly privileged position over millions of us that are renting from basically slumlords. You got to pick out and put in your own new working kitchen and bathroom and can maintain them yourself. I also don't believe for one second you would be evicted from the house you bought for a well applied lick of your favorite colour paint etc...

There is no way you can twist this into 'oh, poor me, I'm so oppressed'.

Tbh when I owned with ex the value didn't go up very much. It can be the way it goes?

Yes annoying though if you thought it would appreciate more @Hotpinkparade

OP owns half the house, a trust owns the other half. So she pays rent to the trust (presumably half what would be market rate).

I'm quite confused about the rent paying situation. You own this house yet you pay rent. Is that not why you don't feel richer? You have not kept your cash, its gone to someone else.

OP you sound quite naive - if you’re going to be involved in purchasing property, at the very least you need to be very aware that values do not always go up - as you are seeing, they can stagnate, and also they can go down, sometimes considerably. Many people have lost loads on money in the property market. Please do the necessary research before making any further purchases or investments (note: many (most/all?) other types of investments can also stagnate or lose money). If you think something is guaranteed to increase in value, most likely that is not true.

How much would have costed you if you had put all the money into interest paying accounts and paid rent instead? Would you have been better off?

Chances are, you are better off this way, unless you had invested it successfully, which takes some knowledge and luck.

It is a personal thing, but, if I had the privilege of receiving an inheritance large enough to pay for a whole housein London, in cash, so to live there for 8 years rent and mortgage free, I would consider myself very fortunate indeed.
I could have saved a lot in the meanwhile, or paid a lot towards private pensions, not to mention the mental peace coming from owning my own house.

Relying on property valuation increasing in order to gain money is equivalent to relying on an inheritance. It doesn't always go the way you want.
Trouble is, people don't read the small print. Prices are not guaranteed to increase.

Same here.

We actually went into negative equity, couldn’t remortgage when our deal ran out and had to pay extortionate rates. It was devastating!

As soon as we recovered enough with the equity to have enough for a deposit we cut our losses and sold. For less than we originally paid.

it felt like we’d just poured money down the drain, though we had a roof over our heads of course.

talking with a London solicitor yesterday, he said top end in London is still active but flats
have not been selling,
i personally would get 3 different estate agents to value, bear in mind what a Like for like rental would of cost you in the time you’re been there , as a room in London is costing 1000 to 1400 plus guessing you have made a huge saving there ,
more than you would of made if you invested the o original amount,
plus when you sell your primary residence, it’s capital gain free where any savings invest investments would’ve been taxed.
the property market is a bit precarious at the moment and I suspect we’ll go down a lot more with this current government and the wild economic situation,
I have to sell a property at the moment and in an ideal world would not do so in this market, but I can’t afford to wait it out so I’m gonna sell and rent. For a year Fingers crossed for you op

I think it might be flats in general tbh OP. We bought a flat in 2016, sold it early 2020 and moved into a 4 bed detached. We sold the flat at exactly what we paid for it, which didn’t bother me tbh because we hadn’t been there long and hadn’t done anything to it. Our house value has subsequently gone up by over 200k according to zoopla and bank estimate (although we’ve not had it valued officially as not going to move). I checked our old flat out of interest and the zoopla value is basically the same as what we sold it for. For some reason flats seemed to have struggled post Covid, as when we bought the flat we paid a lot more than the previous owners did circa 2010, so there was definitely growth in that gap. On that basis, I think I’d just bite the bullet and sell if I was you as I can’t see the trend changing. We are south east, if that affects anything!

I think the thinking that a house/flat value should go up with inflation is flawed. Its a function of supply and demand, and as you know the rate of increase (or loss!) varies by area.
So just look to move to an area where the increase since 2017 has been the same as where you are currently and you will still have retained your place on the property ladder! Perceived problem solved.