to be kicking ourselves for making such a stupid decision & wishing we could change it.

[Fruitstick]

We sold our house in London at the height of the financial crisis.

We wanted to leave as had new baby and toddler. House was small, worry about schools etc.

Everyone told us that we may never be able to sell if we didn't get out. Housing market was in freefall etc etc

Have just received email to say, 4 years later it sold for £300k more. Up 50%.

We were idiots. What were we thinking. We moved up north and our current house as gone up £10k in that time.

I know it's only money, and hindsight is a wonderful thing but it's making me feel sick to think of it.

I feel we fucked up massively.

Please make me feel better

But in that 3 years, you've had a lot more space for the then baby & toddler to play in (probably including a garden), the older one at least will have started school & you didn't have to worry/worried less about which school DC1 went to, you gave up your job/reduced hours so you had more time with the DC, possibly something you wouldn't have been able to afford to do in London.
If its any comfort, several of my friends have had similar experiences. Others have really lucked out. If I'd had my time again, I may have made different decisions and been at least £100k up on the property ladder. However, when it comes down to it, I think you should look at where you live as your home not as a pot of money.

Fruitstick - you're better off up north! And my home is worth less than half the extra profit yours fetched but I wouldn't swap where I live for gold dust!

After my Grandad died earlier this year, we were clearing out his council house when we found a letter from the council sent in 1982 offering my grandparents the chance to buy the house for £36,000. There were various other bits of paperwork suggesting that my grandparents had seriously looked into it, then decided against it for some reason.

The house is now worth £750,000+! I admit I had a momentary feeling of wondering how different things might be now if we were selling the house for nearly a million rather than handing it back to the council. Then again, who knows if we would have been any better off in the long run? Noone can ever predict the future. Best of course to forget it and move on - what else can we do?

I'd be gutted too but I'd choose the North over London any day x

There may be an alternate universe where you are still there and your now school-age DC are in a dreadful school, you are posting that you'd give any amount of money for them to go to a decent country school but you can't move because you can't leave London because of your job due to [insert glittering career reason], although you are desperate to as you've got a new boss you can't stand.

(My DSIS bought her first house - a 2 up 2 down - in 1979 for £3000. In 1988, when I bought my first, also a 2 up 2 down, it was £66,000. That's 22 times more expensive, not 2 times more. She has no mortgage now while we are still paying a massive one. It makes me grind my teeth at how people just before us got so lucky. But then, there are people now who will struggle to buy anywhere at all.)

The trouble is, the housing market is a lottery (to use a cliche). I had a similar story to the OP, though on a much smaller scale, when I sold my flat in London for about £30k more than I paid for it. (This was several years ago.) I thought I was terribly lucky because the price was vastly inflated, and the housing market would crash at any moment. In fact the flat carried on increasing ridiculously in value and if I'd hung onto it for another year I could have paid off the mortgage on my new place.

I did kick myself. But I also know people who had much worse stories - people who bought at the peak of the housing boom and then found themselves sitting on a pile of negative equity. Not to mention all the people who just can't get on the housing ladder at all because property is now so expensive.

From what the OP says, it looks like they got £600k for their house, which means they'd have been able to buy something very nice in the north. So I'm not going to feel too sorry for you.

Meh. I could have bought a small house on just my salary 12 years ago. I never did.
I didn't have a crystal ball that told me what would happen shortly afterwards to the housing market.
But, still, my choice.
The same type of house in the same area would now be 4 times the price, and I couldn't get a mortgage now anyway.
I expect ds and I will live in rented houses for ever. This means we have moved 4 times in 7 years, and will probably have to move again.
It means never feeling secure, never being able to do much to the house or the garden (why invest time and money if you may have to leave) and having no house to leave ds when I am dead.
So, frankly, you are pretty lucky. Rejoice in the fact that you did buy a house, and you have that security.

Try not to think of it as property but as a home you've built for your family. Money can be easy come easy go but as long as you have health the rest doesn't matter.

We are currently 50k in negative equity but have a wonderful DD and money is tight but we have a home we can pay the mortgage and put food on the table. The simple things in life can put it in perspective!

Try not to worry!

Jester, you are right, that is harsh.

I will stop thinking about it now.

I think we would still have made the same life choices, more a case of bad timing than poor judgement.

I feel better, thank you

Good, I'm glad you've cheered up. You'd go crazy dwelling on this stuff. You are still better off than the vast majority of people on the planet.

One tip: never watch property shows. The kids in their twenties with budgets of "just" £300k will make you throw your slippers at the telly . Oh, and the £250k for a crash pad in the city...

Glad you've cheered up OP - you need to quietly tell yourself that pondering on these things is a complete waste of time and emotion. Our house is worth 200k more than when we bought it - it's meaningless because we still can't afford to move....it's all relative. It's the people who haven't a hope of getting on the bloody ladder I feel for - where's the hope for them?

Boo fucking hoo, your house up north only went up 10%

My heart bleeds for you while I sit in my tiny tiny house thats in negative equity to the tune of 80%.

How do you cope with the pain?

10k rather. Point still stands.

1. No point feeling sorry for yourself over something that cannot be changed
2. Are you happier in your new home regardless of price increase?? much more valuable IMO
3. As others have said, at least you're on the property ladder - i'm so grateful to even be on the ladder with house prices/mortgages the way they are at the min.

OP I think this will annoy you for a little while, understandably...but you will get over it when you realise you moved for very good reasons and really, you can't put a price on happiness, contentment, and feeling settled with your family. Don't worry about it.

I also did exactly the same thing, sold just before the financial crisis as I was worried about covering the odd £100 if the rental failed and it was a huge mistake that I also regret. Even worse, I have been renting since and cannot afford to buy again, so fell off the ladder and am likely to remain off it for a while yet.

I do feel your pain, I have done this twice as well, you'd have thought I'd have learned, but there you are, I do have to remind myself I'm lucky to live in a nice house even if it is owned by someone else!

I think it's the whole idea of a property ladder that drives people mad - the idea that you buy a house to make money. I mean, what happened to the idea of buying a house to live in and raise your family in?

That's what DH and I did. We were very very lucky - we bought in 1998 before things went completely batshit crazy, ours is a 3 bedroom with the garage converted into a spare bedroom and it's in a nice location. We have no intention of leaving unless we win £megabucks on the Lottery, basically. We chose the house with having 2DCs in mind, and that was it.

It's now worth about 2.5 times what we paid for it, we were fortunate enough to be able to pay off the mortgage halfway through the term (but given the choice would rather have MIL still alive than have her inheritance {sad}) and we don't see it as an investment - it's our home.

We do worry about our DDs though - how are they ever going to be able to buy?

i lost 25k on a house i bought in 2006- id be stuck there indefinitely if i didnt meet dh who happened to get a good inheritance hence together we could take the hit, we sold up and moved on three years ago. I felt sick at the time but have come to accept that I was unlucky, many were lucky but many have ended up in a far worse situation than me. sounds like you didnt lose much yet gained a lot.

pointy im with you. we are lucky to live in a nice house now which is our home and we invest in it for our own benefit only- we dont necessarily expect to make anything given what happened with my house. a house is to live in not to make money. and for those who do hope to make money, good luck but theres only so much the market can take, surely, so its always a risky strategy.

Pointy, yes - my friend from Holland can't get over how funny we are about property here.

SplitHeadGirl - Ha! I'm Dutch too!

Christelle we are slowly but surely making our house our own now that the bank no longer owns it. The garden is our next project - ours was one of the two last houses built, if you dig down 6 inches you find half bricks, bits of cement, chunks of rusty wire - it needs professionals with heavy digging equipment and an infusion of fresh soil. We can afford to do it this year, then we'll save up for a bit longer and do the next thing. DD1 ran through the living room into the garden a few hours ago shouting "I love our house!" - that is priceless.

Haha really Pointy?? That is so funny!! :D My friend Esther thinks we stress ourselves out too much over a HOUSE!!!! And you know, she is right!!

Fruitstick, have you considered the possibility that the owners may have increased the sale price by doing loads of expensive renovation work, eg loft extension, conservatory, knocking through the lounge etc. You'd have to consider how much they may have spent to get the price they did. Hope that makes you feel better!

You could have posted "I wish I had invented x, then I would have made a packet whilst improving the quality of life for the world."

You could have posted "I wish I'd picked the right numbers for the euro millions draw last night, then I would have made a packet in a fair game of luck"

Instead you post "I wish I'd sold my house at a massive mark up, then I would have made a packet whilst helping financially cripple the next generation of house buyers"

Sad that society has come to this.