Bad time to sell but need to sell

[houseofdreamz]

We need to sell our house. We bought it in 2022 at the height of post-pandemic madness as we needed to be closer to elderly family members. It has fortunately held its value better than many properties we considered (I am a Zoopla price stalker) but we have seen two estate agents who have both said it will go for about 10 to 15% less than we paid for it.

We can still afford to buy a new house. But the reality is our house is in a high price bracket (only four houses sold in this bracket in my area in 2025). Estate agents are warning it could be over six months to find a buyer and they will offer what they offer regardless of price.

I can’t change the market and I don’t look upon my home as an investment as such. But this would mean that we would have to use some savings to buy the new house which eats away at the financial buffer I want to create as a result of moving. We can stay in the new house for longer and try to ride out the market BUT I am coming to the view that this isn’t just a soft market but an actual correction after the crazy highs in 2022. If that’s the case, yes it should go up slowly in value if house prices go up, but it would take a long time to recover the hole in the purchase price and over that period of time we will have to spend more money on a higher mortgage when I want to downsize and reduce costs. Also our mortgage fix is up in 2027 and we will go from 3.14% to god knows what. Very hard time to try to predict interest rates I feel!

I guess my question is do people agree this is a correction rather than just a slump? Would you try to ride it out or cut your losses and move onto the next stage? It’s a very old house and costs us a lot of money - boiler broke recently and it’s costing us £12k to fix as the heating system is old and needed an upgrade to be fixed. God knows - the roof could go next and then I would really regret not doing everything we could to move (although roof seems fine currently 🤞).

I feel a bit caught in an economic whirlwind at the moment and not too sure what would be best.

I think the market is very different depending on location. Prices in our area continue to rise but sale are taking a while, a couple of miles down the road prices have fallen a lot.

If you want to move, I’d move. There’s no evidence that you’ll get a significantly better price if you wait a year or a couple of years. If moving is what you want to do, I would go for.

10-15% nominal price decline for a house bought in 2022 is excessive. Was it a leasehold and/or a new build?

thanks for the responses so far!

@Papricat nope - just in my area houses around the £1m mark at that time are going for a lot less now

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a correction vs a slump.

I agree that some properties, in some areas, particularly larger, more expensive properties in the South of the UK , have fallen a lot in nominal terms. I think 10-15% fall is definitely realistic for some properties,@Papricat. It's refreshing to hear estate agents being honest about pricing @houseofdreamz.

Personally, I think that house prices will generally fall further, possibly a lot more depending on what happens economically. It could take a long time to play out, so I would tend to 'cut my losses' in your situation and get on with life, as you can afford to do this.

I think I would just sell and get on with your life, I know I would feel very unsettled if I didn’t do that but that is just my personality.

Sell now. If your property grows in price so will the rest of the market. There is little point in waiting for yours to recover value. If you need to put in cash you’ll get more bang for your buck now rather than waiting

Thanks. I think this is the thing - if I wait we might get more but will have to spend more. It’s just so depressing to see such a large loss!

The market came down after 2022 and then got busy autumn winter 2024/25 before the stamp duty change and now is in a slump. It may improve if the bank of England reduce interest rates but the international scene is so volatile at the moment it's hard to predict

We are in a similar station’s with the same advice given from the estate agent. We are going to put it on the market anyway and see what happens. We actually do need to move relatively urgently for a variety of reasons but I think it won’t happened for a good year or so given the state of the market and what’s selling on our street just now. But you have to be in it to win it I guess!

You would probably be best to get on with selling in the Spring then, as it tends to be the best time of the year. Things are likely to worsen later in the year imo. If you choose a realistic asking price ( a bit below what houses are selling for), there is no reason why you wouldn't attract interest. You also need to be really proactive at pushing things through after that. Good luck.

We have booked the estate agent to come and do the pictures. Sigh. I hate everything about house selling. But needs must.

There are massive price increases around me. It is very location dependent.

We lost a fair chunk on our last sale because of the market but sucked it up and very happy we moved to where we wanted to be. That's the main thing. If you can absorb the loss, which you can, then take that discomfort for the comfort of living where you want to be and moving forward with your life instead of hanging on in the wrong place with uncertainty. I agree it's probably a correction but bottom line is nobody ever knows what the market will do, that's the nature of it, so you can never plan to gain from it, and focus on your quality of living instead.

When I saw overnight advertised asking prices increases after the announcement of the stamp duty holiday in 2020 (and sadly potential buyers actually using those asking prices as a guide to what they were offering) I knew bad things were coming for the housing market. Either the artificial inflation would be very short and only last the stamp duty holiday period or far worse and far more likely, the artificial inflation would create a step change in house prices that were slowly and steadily going up year by year anyway to create whopping house price inflation (like we saw in 2022). When there is an artificial increase in house prices that is not backed up by a growing economy but instead a shaky post-pandemic economy that would also see high inflation, those prices will only go one way after a few years. And that is exactly what has happened now.

We were looking to buy for several years (looking before Covid) and when estate agents would phone in 2021 and 2022 to ask if we’re still looking, I would say we’ve stopped looking for now because we waiting for the downturn. They thought I was mad, my family thought I was mad too to think there would be a downturn and I ‘should buy before prices increased more’. I’m glad I stuck to my instinct.

The best example of the overnight price increase I saw were too identical houses on the same road, one priced at 425K and selling for 415K before the stamp duty holiday announcement and one put on the market not long after the announcement for 465K. The stamp duty saving would have been about 12K on the house. There was no justification for that increase except estate agents thought they could get away with it, and they did. But in no way was that artificial increase sustainable in a poor economy.

We got to the stage last year where we really needed to upsize so we did, we were happy that the prices had stabilised a little by that point but if we were to sell in the next few years we would loose money for sure but no way as much if we had bought in 2022.

So this is not a soft market, this is a correction and I believe there is more correction to come!

I can’t predict it of course and worldwide events have an impact but I don’t think it’s sensible to wait out a potential slump to be honest because I don’t think it is a slump and you must remember that you may sell your house for less but you are also buying for less too!

If this answers your question - I think there was a big over-inflation in prices around Covid and the stamp duty incentives, so yes, I think there's a "correction" in that many houses weren't ever really worth what people were paying. Classic bubble. Having just moved, I'm very aware of what has been going on in my local market and there was a period last year where everything just seemed to stop - properties were being taken off the market, rather than selling. But although prices had come down from the bubble, they weren't really dropping dramatically. This year many of the properties that were taken off have been relisted and have now sold, so the market is now moving to some extent and prices seem to be a bit stronger as well.
A house of the same design as the one I bought in March went under offer within a couple of weeks of listing in April at £65k more than i paid. Admittedly the condition is way way better, but they'd tried to sell last year and took off the market until the spring. So in my area, prices are pretty quickly seeming to recover a bit.

Possibly it depends on where you are going to as much as the property you are selling. As long as you aren't moving to an area where prices are surging, buying/selling in a bit of a slump can be a good time because it can keep the gap between what you buy and sell smaller. Whereas in a boom that gap generally gets bigger (assuming you are upsizing). So although you might technically "lose" on the value of your sale, you can likely claw some of that back by buying wisely.

Interest rates just reduced. Might help you.
Sell now though.

You sound very level headed. Even if there isn't a large correction and things don't fall particularly, I can't see anything recovering quickly. I think the economy could be in the doldrums for years and so I don't see a fast upturn in property prices - if you could wait for a decade then maybe. However, as you rightly identify this is your home and about moving forward with your life. In addition, if you are staying in a similar area, your next purchase should also be cheaper. Don't let it be a millstone, get in on the market and see what happens.

No one can really second guess where the market is going to go.

I think there is more potential for downside rather than upside. But I've been wrong before and no doubt will be wrong again. I think prices still defy most analysts expectations.

The most important thing I think is to look for value at the point you are buying/selling and not to over leverage yourself.

If you stuff all your money into one thing (housing) then you are totally exposed to that particular market, so if it goes up great, but if it goes down it is ruinous.

I would put it on the market and see what offers you get, if any. If it doesn't sell then sit tight and try again in a year or so. If it does, cut your losses and move.

Thanks everyone - we are going to do it. Interest rate drop today I don’t think will have too much of an effect but who knows. It’s difficult because we had no option but to move at the market high and I am incredibly grateful we did for many reasons. Now I just need someone to fall in love with the current house and overlook the damp 🤞

Heating on even though it’s May, windows open, run dehumidifiers and then hide them in the shed. Have lilies three days before viewings- they cover any smells and paint over any marks repeatedly if you need to