AIBU to be gutted my house has lost me money?

You definitely lost money relative to if you had invested it in the stock market instead. The opportunity cost is what matters.

I think one of the problems you have run into (bearing in mind that as a property owner in London you are in fact enormously fortunate, even if not as fortunate as you may have hoped) is that the property market has phases where it drops and phases when it goes crazy. I bought a flat in NW London back in the 90s and for over 10 years I had negative equity. Fortunately I didn’t want to go anywhere and needed somewhere to live so I wasn’t affected by the fact I was “living in a loss.” When I did sell after about 15 years, it went for 3 times what I had paid. So the huge swings are real and a lot is about luck of timing. When the property market is depressed, even on a local basis, it can remain that way for a long time. But it can be hard to plan your life around that.

Don't be ridiculous.

Presumably you'd have to have lived somewhere and that would cost.

If you feel sorry for yourself have a look at flat prices in Aberdeen. I know plenty of people who after the oil town turn are stuck.

Paid 100k and now be lucky to get 70k now. Or the people after the 2008 crash left in negative equity.

You don't even have a mortgage to worry about.

Exactly this.

Of course it's not an idiotic mistake. You've had a secure home you were happy with, and you were vanishingly unlikely to make the sort of returns on a flat that people got 20 odd years ago. Nobody saw lockdown coming, and your decision to buy rather than invest and rent privately meant you were sheltered from the worst of it when your income went down.

Sounds alright, tbh?

Nw3 is totally crazy for 3 bed flats and houses anyway. The house price appreciation thing to fund forward purchases only really works if you are moving further out or a less desirable area e.g. to finchley or Muswell Hill or even Whetstone. That's what many people did, moved out a zone or out of London altogether.

If you are staying within nw3 you need a larger mortgage (or higher income) or some sort of windfall.

At least they didn’t go down, I know someone in which that happened to, it was only by 10k but still

The people who used to buy flats in London- 20 something urban professionals have mostly seen real terms cut to their wages. So they have to delay buying and then they reach the age where they want to move to the commuter towns.

Dh's mum bought a flat in her 20s as a secretary with Dh's father (who lived with parents for 10 years) . Today they would be earning maybe 60k combined which isn't enough to buy a london flat really. We managed to buy a 2 bed flat after 3 years of working in our 20s but dh was working as a junior at an investment bank

I actually think in a previous generation we would have been able to buy in OP's area without inheritance, Dh would love to live in Nw3! We don't earn enough esp with childcare fees and we need to buy in an area with good catchment (also down to our wages) so given op probably doesn't live near the desirable hampstead state primary schools given the price of her flat, it's not an option. We live in a much more ordinary part of nw london but which ticks more boxes.

Agree unless he moved out of London altogether, in which case he may have

Two bedroom flats in London are the worst for stagnating – there’s just far too many of them, so they don’t perform as well as other properties. Bought my south London flat for £380k in 2015 and it went for the same when sold in 2023. I just looked up my old neighbours flat as I know she sold it too – bought for £390k in 2016 and sold for £396k last year.

@Hotpinkparade don't forget the prior owner would have bought at the peak with his proceeds from the sale to you. It's unlikely he 'cashed in' that £300k rise.

When I bought in 2019 everyone was saying the ladder was dead. I bought expecting I would never buy a house. I did think i could buy a marginally larger flat in a few years as it's the same market but there aren't actually that many 3 bed flats so they are quite expensive in comparison and not worth the marginal increase in space given the higher interest rates and stamp duty (also only having 1 child).

I thought we mostly bought cos we didn't want to rent or live with family or wanted predictable mortgage payments for 2, 5 or 10 years as well as ability to save aggressively for retirement in our 40s (realistic if you buy in your 20s)
.

The previous owner bought in a recession when prices were probably low and sold when the recession had ended when the prices had risen again that’s why he made quite a large profit
You bought when the value of the flat was already high so not surprised really it hasn’t really risen
Are ye looking to stay in the area or would ye like to buy a house somewhere

In fact op you had a sum of £325k - are you seriously thinking that if you had invested that (and lived where on £1k a month that you were paying?) it would have turned into £825k??

I think you have done ok. I sold my first house at a loss, or just about for what I paid. That was fine - I had lived there for years, that was what it was for, not to make money.

Valued the same as you bought it, so what money have you 'lost'?

The advice to property investors is to avoid london like the plague, its plateaued so no profits to be made and flats are actively going down (harder to sell, often leasehold, issues since grenfell etc...).

You are never guaranteed to 'make' money on a house, if you can get what you paid back thats a win. Look at it as basically 8 years rent free living.

I paid £625k in 2017. (I put this into an inflation calculator that said this would be ‘worth’ £822k in 2025.)

OP you've really misunderstood what this inflation calculator is telling you. £625k is £625k - whether that's in 2017 or 2025. £625k doesn't magically become £822k in 8 years 'just because inflation'. The purchasing power of £625k is less in 2025 than it was in 2017, meaning if you wanted to buy goods included in the components that make up the inflation figure (bread, yoga mats, TV subscriptions, pre-packed salad, dry-cleaning, ceramic tiles, curtains etc), you'd get fewer of those items today, than you would have in 2017.

So, if you sold your house today, you wouldn't be able to buy the same number of yoga mats with the proceeds, as you could have in 2017. That's true. But presumably you have no intention of selling your house and using the proceeds to buy pre-packed salad and TV subscriptions, so it's completely irrelevant. What's relevant, is if you sold your house and bought another house, what that level of inflation is i.e. house price inflation. In your area, house price inflation has remained static - so the purchasing power of your house proceeds is the same. You could buy the same house, for the same price, so you've not lost anything at all.

So someone who was lucky enough to inherit money which means they're presumably lived rent free and mortgage free for the last eight years is upset that they also haven't been able to make a large profit out of their good fortune.

If you had invested, you’ve got an average of about 2 1/2% over the last eight years. Say it cost you 400,000 when you bought it. You would’ve got roughly 100,000 in interest on which you would’ve paid tax as unearned income and then where would you live? You would’ve been paying rent so yes you’ve saved a lot of money. You probably have paid £1500 a month for eight years Work that out.

Only if you invested it. But even then if you would have accumulated 200k from investments on top, you would have easily spent it on renting.

However, unless the flat is extremely premium area, worth 1-2m and up, I don't see how you have expected to to make 200k on it. Covid boom was temporary, even houses are back to pre covid prices now.

Gold is up 30%

https://www.business-standard.com/markets/news/gold-prices-up-30-in-2024-set-for-best-calendar-year-show-in-10-yrs-wgc-124121300285_1.html

with trumps tricks people turn to gold as a safer bet

Yanbu to be disappointed that your flat isn't worth more than you paid for it. But it's just one of those things and you'll need to make your peace with it. Years ago, we sold our house at a loss. That's just life sometimes.

I appreciate it won’t guarantee you a sale, but you can still try putting the flat on the market at a higher price and see how it does. When I sold my house - couple of years ago, the estate agent valued my house and recommended I put it on the market for £10k less than the valuation amount, for an easy sell. I wasn’t in a hurry, so asked for it to be put on for £10k more than the valuation and ended up getting the full asking price for it. I was £20k better off, as a result. It can’t hurt to try for more than the valuation and if you don’t get what you want, you can always take it off the market again.