Moving abroad next year - Sell now or later?

[Twosquare]

Hello everyone,
We have some important decisions to make. Please can I ask for some support and advice from you all? I'm utterly confused - we are struggling to make a decision.

In 2018: DD1 got a place in her first choice grammar school. We planned to rent out our house and buy another house closer to her school (we live 25 miles away now - in SE London).

Early 2019: Due to some massive change in our personal circumstances, we have to move abroad in 2020. We can move only after June 2020 - but have some flexibility about when to move (no deadline).

What to do now?

PLAN1:
Sell our house now and rent closer to DD1s new school. Relocate when we are ready next year.
Pros: Closer to DD1s school, freedom to relocate when we want to
Cons: Hassle of moving twice, expensive renting (quality of properties available doesn't look promising at the moment), uprooting DD2 from the nursery she literally just settled into.

PLAN2:
Stay put in our current house till next year. DD1 commutes by bus/train - I know a few children who commute to that school from our area. Friends say DD will make a lot of friends and with all the half term/ xmas and other breaks, 1 year will just fly.

Pros: DD2's life is not disturbed. Nothing changes for anyone except for DD1. She says she is happy to commute.
Cons: Uncertainty of brexit and house prices. What if the market crashes 20-30%?? We have to take a large financial hit on the house and if we cant, we'll be stuck in our current house, cant relocate and still worse for DD1 who making this commute for years.

Sending DD1 to our local secondary is not an option. She has her heart set on her school and I don't think we can get a place in our local secondary now anyway (its very oversubscribed and popular).

What would you do if you were me?

Do you think house prices will fall further ? Should we just sell now?

I would say put it on market now. It may take a while to sell, you never know. If your plan changes in couple of months, you would be in good position to buy near DD's school.

Put it on the market and see what response you get. Might be that you sell it at a good price/ more than you expect to (which is what's just happened to us - put our house on 'speculatively' at what I thought was a stupid price. Sold in less than a week for over asking price - go figure). If you don't get any interest/ stupid low offers stay put. If you get a good offer/ good buyer then move and rent.

Sorry, my post should have read OPTION1 and OPTION2.

We have to move abroad. Ideally next June/July. It can be later, but not sooner. There will be no change of plans to stay back in UK.

My question was : Sell now and move to rented (Option1)
Or Stay in our house, sell next year and move abroad directly (Option2)

@Closetlibrarian
Things are pretty quiet in my area. I don't think we'll get a good price if we try to sell now. If we stay, I'm worried about house prices falling even further :(

When you move abroad, are you planning to buy or rent?

Do you need the money from the sale of your current home?

Depending on those answers - could you consider renting your current home from when you leave the UK via an agent, or earlier if you want to move nearer school?

This is what we did when we moved to Oz, and we sold our uk home before the 5 year capital gains tax took affect.
Our reasoning

• we had a home in a nice part of the uk, and if things didn't work out we had a home to come back to
• we were also worried about brexit so gave us time to wait and see, and actually we realised a much better exchange rate than had we sold sooner
• our rent was well in excess of our mortgage, (but we did change our mortgage to interest free for that reason) and even after agent fees we managed to save a little each month.

Your post has bought back to me the almost ceaseless bloody what if questions tho - I don't miss those!

Good luck.

We have to sell before we move abroad. We plan to buy there.

Things were/are quiet around me too. But ours still went quickly.

No harm in putting it on market to see what happens. You may find that makes the decision for you.