Have you lost money when you sold your flat/house?

[frolicmum]

We're looking to sell, bought in 2017 and it seems we may have overpaid.

Anyone else in the same boat or sold and lost money?

We broke even on a flat bought in 2007 but we had made a profit in rent during that time, current house bought in 2017 worth more than it was then.

Yes , lost quite a lot in the 90s on a house but we did make it up : eventually!
Never been lucky with the housing market

No, but I buy houses that need a good clean and redecorate. New houses can be up to 10% over market value.

It is often worth buying somewhere a bit dated or grotty but in a reasonable location to get better value. The cost of a deep clean and a few hours gardeners time are small against new house purchase price with taxes and fees added on as a percentage.

I bought my house just before lockdown for market value and suspect I will be losing quite alot on it with the current climate. Luckily I've a fixed mortgage for 5 years as my LTV was 90% 😟

I will be losing money when I eventually sell this house as I've done some structural work and had new doors fitted. But I think at the moment it's still better to sell

I bought in 2016 and am now selling at a loss. Part of this is due to CV and partly due to the sheer volume of new build two bed flats that have sprung up in the same area. However, I never bought it as an investment and it was the right thing for me at the time. Annoyingly whilst flat prices have sunk house prices have gone up so no platitudes there to help.

But nothing I can do about it. I actually bought on the cheaper end for two beds in the area with some being listed at 50k plus more than mine and now selling for the same price so at least i didn't buy one of those.

Made losses twice but many more gains on other houses. The first loss DHs’s company covered the negative equity but I don’t think many companies do that so much now. Second we lost £40k but needed to move for work again.

Hi @frolicmum! We’re having the exact same thoughts as you, also bought in 2017. We’ve put in a new bathroom and re-decorated everywhere but I don’t know if that will of paid off... we go to market the end of the week so will see then I suppose!

Yeah. We bought a flat in 2007 so right at the start of the crash.
We would've been ok as we stayed there for about 7 years but when we purchased it, it had a very short lease - apparently wasn't a problem when we bought it 🤨 but became a big issue when we wanted to sell.

We had to take out a loan to sort the lease out - £20k

We then sold it for £5k more then we originally paid for it 😫

Only finished paying off the loan last year - 4 years after we sold it. Thankfully we had been over paying the mortgage by about 50% so we at least had a bit of equity to take out once the mortgage was cleared.

We're definitely pushing our luck with the current house - by the time we've finished our renovation we'll be lucky to recoup. But we'll have a lovely home; a spacious warm place for our boys to grow up; great location in a town we love; and low monthly mortgage payments instead of rent.

All in all, since it's a home not an investment I don't feel like it's a waste of money per se. I think it you put a price on the home you've had since you bought, you can probably find a way to see the value it's added rather than the loss?

But then I'm a hippy optimist :)

We probably will make a loss- also bought in 2017. Our current asking price is only
£8k more than we paid. By the time we pay for the agents fees and solicitors it will possibly have just about broken even/lost a little.

Sounds like some people have been in our shoes!

Let me know how it goes @Hopefulbride18 x

Yes...but no good whingeing because shouldn't have overpaid in the first place.

@romatheroamer who is whinging? Are you?

Just asking for other people's experiences.

Will do @frolicmum!

Have you had some estate agents round to value your place? X

We bought in 2017 and bought a fixer-upper. If we were to sell now, we wouldn’t get what we’ve ploughed in to fix it up. We still need to do the living room floor (large area and currently real wood so would look to replace with similar), kitchen, bathroom and sort the conservatory out. So it’s unlikely we’ll make a profit for a number of years but we’ll have somewhere that is 95% suitable for us. For that extra 5% suitability we may end up losing other suitable factors though with our budget.

Is there any way you can just stay put for a couple more years?
We overpaid in 2008, but we stayed for 10 years so we're able to ride out any peaks and troughs whilst paying down the mortgage so it all worked out well in the end.

Yes, but due to the housing crash in the 90s.
However that meant all house prices crashed, so, as we were moving up the property ladder, we saved more on our house, than we lost on our first home.

So, if you were selling a house worth £150 000 and buying at £220 000, with a 10% crash, you lost £15 000 on yours, but saved £22 000 on the one you were buying IYSWIM ? So net gain for those moving up.

OP:
I was replying to your question to say that yes we had lost money by selling for less than we had paid for a house but that it was our fault for paying too much so it was no good our whingeing about it because we shouldn't have paid too much for it. That was our experience.

Yes, bought my flat in Hackney in 1988 for £76,500.

Sold it in 1997 for £75,000.

It's now worth probably £700,000.

C'est la vie!

I’ve lost 5k on a flat but bought in a boom sold in a crash. We were upsizing so didn’t really matter. We stayed in the next place for 7 years and sold for double the price we paid and then broke even on the next house. About to embark on another project where we will stay maybe forever but maybe not...we will make money on this one though

Yes, once you factor in renovations and repairs.

However it was much less than we would have spent in rent over the period so I reckon it’s not so much a loss as just not a gain. The idea that buying a house should make you money rather than costing money to live in is common, but rather strange when you think about it.

Try totalling up your mortgage payments and fees vs your equity and see if you’ve made a loss after that. Then compare to renting over the same period.

We lost big time on our last house and no discount on what we were buying. Thought it didn’t matter as we wouldn’t move again. Fast forward a few years dh losing his job and we will be selling, again at a loss. At least this time we can buy something for less than it would have been but still is pretty crap to be forced to sell in such circumstances

I bought a flat in 2010, sold it at at £12K loss in 2015. But we bought a house for 10k less than its asking price (Scotland, so unusual) and it has now gone up in value, because the town we moved to is having "a moment".

I was mortified that we made a loss, but I did know why - mainly because we bought on a busy road in a sellers' market and then sold in a buyers' market 😬

I'd come back on to the thread to say what @peajotter has said in the interim.
If you think about what you would have paid out in rent over the years, had you not bought in the first place, then you would have to factor that into the calculations too.