Panic Attacks Over House Selling Situation

[rosalux]

This is quite a first world problem and I apologise in advance, but it is causing me sleepless nights and daily panic attacks and I could really do with some advice/perspective.

We recently bought a house using a combination of some money my mum left me when she died and a much bigger mortgage than we would otherwise have chosen. We did this because it was a house of a size and in an area which don't come up often in a price bracket we could afford. The plan was to sell our smaller house and use equity to reduce the mortgage on the new house. Literally the day after we exchanged the Iran war started, which has caused me extreme stress that has never really abated. Had we been due to exchange any later we wouldn't have gone ahead. To add to it, the buyer on our house has just pulled out for the second time (long story) and so we will be in the position of substantially higher outgoings for an indefinite period of time and a lower eventual sale price. My husband didn't really want to move and so while he isn't blaming me I feel wholly responsible for this situation and the money we are spending and now I'm starting to hate the new house which suddenly seems much less nice than before. I don't know what to do to pull myself out of this spiral of doom and panic which has got to the point where my husband says he dreads coming home from work because I am always so upset/panicked etc.

You will be ok. You just need to work out whether you want to sell the new house or the old house and stick with that decision and accept that you will "lose" more money that you had hoped on the sale. That is totally outside your control. Life shit happens sometimes. You are not going to end up homeless and you will feels loads better once you have sold the spare house.

The quicker you sell the other house the less money you will lose in mortgage payments and the less stressed you will be. I would go for a reasonable to large reduction in price.

Thank you. I am reconciled to losing money, which I know is ultimately only money, I feel like such an idiot though.

Could you rent out your old house and use the income to fund your mortgage?

Try not to worry, you made the best decision at the time and managed to secure a house that may not have been available in the future. Your house will eventually sell, and even if you do have to take a hit on the price, you still will have benefiited from an inheritance that allowed you to buy a better house.

Thank you. We have looked into renting out our current home and I will do so more seriously if we are in tge same position in a year.

I mean panicking is not going to affect whether or not the war continues or not.

Worrying about stuff you can't control is pointless.

Work out the worse case scenario and look to the positives.

Yes you might be down in the short term, but eventually you will recover, even if you have to wait years.

You decided to go long on property and you have to live with that decision now.

Ending up divorcing your husband over it isn't going to solve the problem, it will just make it worse.

Don’t panic! The house will sell. Maybe at a slightly lower price but it will sell. It’s just a hiccup along the way. Where I am the market has been dead for about two years but in the last month lots of things are selling.

Secondly don’t worry about ‘losing’ a tiny bit of money vs best case scenario.

• by not selling your old house as part of a chain, you got the house you really wanted
• you probably got a better price on the new house because you had no chain
• you did not have the stress of being in a bigger chain
• you did not have the stress of losing the new house when buyer pulled out of the old house - stress and cost of losing your onward purchase

Price the old house sensibly, you will get there in the end. Don’t rent it as it takes several months to break even, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get the tenants out when you need to (presumably you DO need to sell within 3 (?) years to get your higher stamp duty back. I can’t remember if it’s 2 or 3 years for that).

Thanks for the helpful perspective @FoundAUserNameDownTheSofa. The points you raise are good ones and accurately reflect our situation; it wasn't done to try and go long on property (I had to look that up) and I had factored in a period of delay, I just hadn't factored in a global economic meltdown precipitated by one man's hubris (perhaps I should have). It's 3yrs for the stamp duty so we do have some time and I am accepting of the need to take a hit from where the market was 6mths ago, but as someone who has carefully arranged their life to avoid risk so far as possible (and I appreciate I am fortunate to have been able to do that), this has really impacted me in a way I had not anticipated. @GasPanic: I do appreciate that my response isn't rational and that world events are out of my control, that's the point about panic attacks - they are a physical response to a psychological experience and not something you can simply decide to have or not have.