What to do?

[Rootvegetables]

We have a 3 bedroom (one is very tiny) terraced house it was built around 1900 and is old! Its in a good area with increasing property prices our neighbours have just sold there's with 90k more than what we paid for ours 4 years ago. However our house needs a new roof, and some other bits probably totalling about 10k to be up to scratch. We have the opportunity to move in with my parents to the area where we actually want to live to get our son into school while we look for a house we would probably be there for a year or more because of other commitments.
So should we do the house up (finding the money won't be easy) but keep it for longer being aware that more things could go wrong but we could make a bit more money in it, but rent it out for the time we are away. Or just sell as it is and move out with money in the bank ready to look even though it would be well over a year until we actually move. The rent would cover the mortgage. Is there any other options I'm missing? It's in se London if that helps, it's our first home so quite small and I'm a sahm. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If you sell now, then your savings will dwindle away- inflation is now 2% and you would be lucky to find a savings account which offered that unless you tied up your money for 1-3 years.

House prices are rising now and London is just going crazy so your best bet is to hang on to it.

If you sell with a dodgy roof then any survey will show this up and you will have to accept lower offers. If it needs £10K spending on it structurally then whatever you sell for has to reflect this.

You could go with the renting it out option but clearly you are then in the situation where you will have to terminate someone's lease- or agree it's for a year exactly- once you find a house to buy- so the two would have to dovetail or you'd need a bridging loan to buy your new place when the old house wasn't sold.

the other option is to do it up and put it on the market now and meanwhile look for your own house in the area where you want to live- why is that not an option?

One other thought- you need to get some quotes for the work that needs doing, so help your decision. It might not be worth doing cosmetic things even like bathrooms and kitchens, but you need to keep the house in good repair because otherwise it will really affect any offers. If you cannot afford the work that has to be done then that will be part of your decision- maybe then the option would be to rent it out and use the income for repairs to it and sell later.

Thanks for your input, the house is quite nice but there are a few damp patches and the bathroom ceilings a mess so apart from the roof which we had a quote for £7000 I'm thinking we could make it actually quite nice for 10k. I just don't know if we should option 1 sell up with faults, sell ip all fixed or take the opportunity to hang onto it for another year or so either fixed or not and sell at a later date. I guess we are looking at leaving in the summer so if we need work done now is the time!

You'll prob get a better price if you get all the bits fixed first- look at what other houses like yours are selling for and think about how much you would lose if it was not done up. you might have to spend 10K but it could add on 15-20K for the sale.