Sell now or later?

[verystuckanddesperate]

I feel like we need to do something.. and soon..
We live in a one bed flat with a toddler and it is starting to feel really cramped, though the flat is a decent size and we have a fairly big garden for London (zone 3/4). Sadly we're not in a position to increase our mortgage by more than 100K or so (or rather - if so..), so if we take away all the moving fees, we're not left with too much wiggle room to get something in the same(y) area (let alone stay in London, which we would prefer to moving out). Basically, in order for us to stay in London, we need to sell our flat at top price (my goal is at a minimum regain the amount we paid for it 8 years ago and hopefully add a bit more - ca 5%). I have received a bit of encouragement from one estate agent who valued it at the price we need to achieve, but I do think that it is a bit above the market value. Are we mad for putting the flat on the market at fairly inflated asking price based on our personal circumstance??
There's another conundrum that our mortgage deal runs out next month (bye bye low interest rates...) and I initially thought that the best idea would be for us to switch for a tracker mortgage while we are trying to sell (because there's no early repayment fees on that). However, after comparing the offers from our current bank, I think if the process of selling might become longer than 1 year, we might be better of getting a 2 or even 3 year old fixed deal without the bank's fee, as the monthly repayments would be lower, we would be repaying the equity faster and would save the 1K bank's fee, and the early repayment fee won't be as big in a year's time.. though maybe I'm counting pennies here...
Basically, in some fairly complicated excel spreadsheet I can see that selling in one year might put us in a bit of a better position with more equity added to the house. We might even have a chance to save up/work towards improving our financial position for better mortgage. However, another year of sharing the bedroom with a toddler is really making me cringe... So.. any words of encouragement would be much appreciated.

I'm afraid I can't comment with regards to whether you should move, especially not knowing your area and budget (though sharing a room with a toddler sounds tough, well done for sticking it out!)

However, I can say that we sold last year after relocating for work, and our mortgage fix was due to run out approx 8 months after we first put our house on the market. We first listed in April 2022 at a good price and had a lot of interest. Two sales fell through in those 8 months. We were really hoping not to renew our fix so as to avoid early repayment fees, but had to do in the end. Don't discount how long it could take you to sell.

But with that said, you could also port your mortgage to your new property, couldn't you? Thus avoiding those repayment fees.

I think you need to carefully weigh up whether you can keep sharing with a toddler for a year, or whether it's more urgent to move. If it's the right thing for your family and your daily life, imo there's never a bad time to move. And also, if you're considering more children at any point in the next few years, I'd move now.

Thank you for your reply @Edgeofthesea . I think we might just start the process and see where it takes us. You have a point there that these things do seem to take a fair amount of time, so that's another reason to start sooner rather than later.
I haven't seen desirable flats for the budget of our current flat price, especially nothing with a garden, so porting the mortgage without increasing the budget might not be an option. Our budget after remortgaging might be around 500K if we're lucky - that is if we manage to sell the current flat at the "top" price. I saw a really random "one off" house for this price not too far from where we are and it gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, we can get something here in London and won't need to move out of London just yet. The house had some drawbacks, of course, but liveable.