Prediction of market in the next year or 2?

[Lillylay]

I know this is really hard to predict but what is your view on what the market will do in Spring and for the next year or 2 after?
We are wanting to move (south east uk) but have a particular area in mind and this needs to be our forever home and just right as we have 5 children. Where we live now though is walking distance to secondary and our second child with Asc starts there next September, so I'm almost tempted to stay put while he gets settled as walking to school would help him settle in.
If the perfect house came up, we would just try and move, but we have been looking for a year and not seen anything at all, and we aren't prepared to put ours on the market and have that stress of trying to find somewhere if it's unlikely a house will come up.

Do you think people are going to look to sell up in Spring or are most people waiting for Covid to calm down before attempting to move etc. Are house prices going to stay stable?

No one knows. But each of the big players in the game (mortgage lenders, estate agents, rightmove etc) release forecast reports you can google for. Just think about potential bias when you do.

The Home Owners Alliance usually has good summary reports and articles about the current state of the market.

Asking the question on here will just get the usual hyperbole

People have been selling like crazy for the last year. Not going to be any different in spring. If anything, there is now a shortage of housing stock, because of the busy market. At the same time, house building is at an all time low due to Covid, supplies, trades, delays in planning. If anything the shortage will get worse and the supply bottleneck will remain.
That means prices, although may not rise a lot, will be stable with perhaps modest rises. You have to be in a position to move straight away when the right house come up. The only way is to sell up first. Being chain free is crucial.

Yes I'll look up the reports thanks for that...

I'm a bit worried about adding more stress to our lives by putting the house on the market, knowing we probably won't find a house for another 9 months and that's if we're lucky, and then worried prices might rise by then too and we could have got more for our house if we waited till we had found something. Luckily ours is in a popular location and the house opposite sold for what I predicted ours would... But its half the size and needed doing up! So I think ours will sell as soon as its on the market.
Just not sure if we should hold out for 2 years till things settle... But then it might all be the same in 2 years time anyway

We haf this exact dilemma last year. Wanted our forever home which we thought we could afford so kept an eye on RM. When an interesting house came up we hit the brick wall of being refused viewings unless we had sold ourselves.

So had to put ours on market. It sold quick but we lost out on that one in the meantime then had to wait 6 months for THE house to come up, been on roller coaster ever since March, hope to complete in next few weeks finally. Had 3 lots of chain collapsing during that time.

Yes we strung our first buyers along for half a year but unfortunately that's all you can do the way market is and doubt it will change. Houses sell like butter and seems prices are going up. House we're buying has climbed 30k since we offered, hope they won't ask for more money last second.

But while you wait your dream house will also go up in price so really can't predict other than suggest go for it sooner rather than later so the gap don't get worse. In the meantime unfortunately you'll have to make peace with the fact you might lose a few buyers waiting for the house but at same time make clear you're only moving for the perfect house.

Best of luck!

Thank you, the agent that valued our house did say that most people are taking 6 months to find a house after having an offer accepted on theirs.
This is my worry that the dream house will come up and we will loose out due to ours not being on the market, I think we will have to just bite the bullet and put it on and see how things go. Just seems quite a stressful time to buy at the moment as its all so competitive and hate all the best and final bidding that seems to be happening now.

Glad you are nearly there with yours!

It sounds like you should stay put to be honest. You've not really said why it's so important to move but you've listed reasons why you should wait. Wait until your child is settled in school. The market is mad and will stay mad while money is so cheap because property has become a hot investment again.

Well the reasons to move is to improve quality of life I guess, for the kids to all have their own bedrooms, more storage, a better garden so they can play football etc. To take away some of that daily life stress of coat cupboards bursting to the brim etc. And so we can finally feel settled knowing the house moving business is done and dusted till we downsize one day, plus our younger child is starting school in our desired area so it would be nice to make friends there etc. Lots of good reasons to move, but I guess we just need to brace ourselves for it not being as straight forward as our move 8 years ago