first time selling & buying - overwhelmed

[hellohome]

hiya.
I'm not even sure where to start. we have a house valued at 650k and are hoping to sell for 600-625k. we owe 80k left on the mortgage. we'd ideally like to downsize and buy mortgage free. if we looked at houses around the 500k mark do you think it would be doable or would we have to go lower? stamp duty would be 15k... leaving 5k for estate agents, solicitors, surveys etc. we wouldn't need to factor in moving costs or storage unit costs if we needed to store our stuff due to dh work.

And how does it even work? I keep reading but I'm still finding it very confusing. so we put ours up for sale... but then have to wait until we get an offer to look / offer on another house? what if we don't find one for ages? I've only seen one house on rightmove that looks suitable in our budget in the last few months :/. ideally I'd like to sell and rent whilst looking but that would take a good 20k out of our budget for buying if say it took a year.

I think around 500k is about right, or a little more if you get closer to the asking price- depends on if you wanted to keep any additional money for savings or for refurbishing the new place?

Depends on estate agents and vendors. We put an offer and got accepted on our new house before we put ours on the market but some people don’t like to do that. We had spent 8 months searching for houses in various areas and finally found the one still haven’t moved in yet but didn’t want to put up ours first in case we got a good offer and lost them because we were taking our time to find the perfect home- we didn’t want the extra pressure and we didn’t want to rent while waiting for a new house.

Couple of things might influence it though- what’s the market like near you and will you be looking at the same area? The EA and Vendor thought we were good buyers because we decided to stay in the same area (and have been for 7 years) and the valuation of our current house could appeal to first time buyers or second time round buyers- so the chain would small.

Being a “cash” buyer will help your stance but the price of your current home is pretty £££ (not knowing location) so who would it appeal to and could a chain be quite lengthy

Thank you so much nevercleanmywindows. our house is a large 4 bed detached house within the catchment of 3 great primaries and a fantastic secondary (just!). it's actually a great price for the area as we are struggling to find a semi or end terrace with room to extend for 500k. we're in a weird position where our house is the best and biggest in the road and annoyingly it may be hard to sell due to an unusual layout. the layout works perfectly for us but understand it may put people off... the market here is the good houses go immediately... the house we liked was under offer the day it went up for sale!! these tend to be houses with room to extend and decent sized gardens as there's not many round here. other houses tend to sit on the market for months/ years

Having bought and sold simultaneously I would think it’s a lot less stressful to sell first & go into rented. You’re then a better prospect as a cash buyer for the house that you want and can move more quickly. I found being in a chain a bit of a nightmare.

Chains are an absolute nightmare! Probably the most stressful part of selling and buying as everything is out of your control. I just couldn’t justify the costs as renting in our area would be so much more costly than our mortgage rates- plus I hate moving and to get comfy somewhere swap utilities and sky etc and then move again is my worst nightmare!

I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer tbh, all depends on yours, buyers and sellers circumstances.

Your house sounds great though OP- why do you want to move?

Have you checked whether there are any penalties to pay for paying off your mortgage early? You may be better to keep a small amount unpaid so as to avoid a penalty.