Is anyone moving now?

[C70R]

GT3Manthey said:

I think we’ll see more retired couples who’s kids have now left for good downsizing giving increased living costs so I suspect they’ll sell providing the bigger houses shift which I think might be the bigger issue.

No point in a retired couple rattling around in a 5 bed home and forking out to heat rooms they no longer use

Hasn't that always been the case? If the oldies can afford it, they stay put. If they'd rather spend the money on cruises, they downsize.

A tale as old as time.

While it might be slightly exacerbated by current energy prices, I very much doubt that a large proportion of empty nesters still in big houses were running them on very marginal budgets.

I suspect those for whom it made financial sense have downsized already. And of the remainder, I suspect it will take more than increased gas bills to trigger a mass downsizing movement.

[Frik]

Maybe. But people are sometime slow to react and fuel prices have risen exponentially over a very short period.

I certainly hope it's the case, but given family homes are always in demand I doubt it will affect prices much.

[Flooble]

C70R said:

GT3Manthey said:

I think we’ll see more retired couples who’s kids have now left for good downsizing giving increased living costs so I suspect they’ll sell providing the bigger houses shift which I think might be the bigger issue.

No point in a retired couple rattling around in a 5 bed home and forking out to heat rooms they no longer use

Hasn't that always been the case? If the oldies can afford it, they stay put. If they'd rather spend the money on cruises, they downsize.

A tale as old as time.

While it might be slightly exacerbated by current energy prices, I very much doubt that a large proportion of empty nesters still in big houses were running them on very marginal budgets.

I suspect those for whom it made financial sense have downsized already. And of the remainder, I suspect it will take more than increased gas bills to trigger a mass downsizing movement.

Also don't forget that outside London the savings from downsizing are more marginal.

E.g. £500K for the four bed "family" home and £350K for the smaller but not too bad two bed Bungalow

Great, £150K "profit". Except that you then have to take off:

Estate Agents Fees - 6K
Solicitors - 3K
Removals - 1K
Survey etc - 1K
Stamp Duty - 8K

And then you probably need to budget 10K for all the repairs or changes that you always seem to end up needing when you move house.

So more like 120K. Still not to be sniffed at, especially if it saves a few grand a year on running costs, but it's not quite the same as the "headline figure". And you will be in a much more cramped place.

[kingston12]

nickfrog said:

kingston12 said:

GT3Manthey said:

I think we’ll see more retired couples who’s kids have now left for good downsizing giving increased living costs so I suspect they’ll sell providing the bigger houses shift which I think might be the bigger issue.

No point in a retired couple rattling around in a 5 bed home and forking out to heat rooms they no longer use

Indeed. I know of quite a few people in this position, and I suspect that a lot of them have done it on a financial basis - what's the point in downsizing when you're being given double digit growth for sitting tight and doing nothing?

It will be interesting to see how many people change their minds if that double digit growth goes away and they are stuck with much higher utility bills to run a house bigger than they need.

We downsized in 2019 when the kids left and we could retire. It was a spur of the moment thing and priced the house at a silly level as we didn't really want to sell as we bought it in 2001 when the kids were small and were attached to the memories I suspect. Low and behold we got close to the absurd asking price after several visits but no offers in 4 weeks.

The irony is our "downsized" property is now worth more than the previous big house but with lower running costs despite costing us 40% less then...

Even if it was going to lose 20% or 30% of its value, which is unlikely to happen, I am not too bothered as it is primarily a place to live.

And we've already made great replacement memories already

Well that certainly sounds like the right way to do it! I assume that involved moving out of London/other City to somewhere that benefited from a COVID price increase before everyone else did the same?

That's another factor that is likely to affect future downsizing decisions, as most would be less inclined to make the same move today (from a purely perspective anyway)

[Jefferson Steelflex]

We must be nuts then. One of our kids has moved out, the other is hardly ever here and we are upsizing.

On that subject, still on for 4th July exchange and 22nd July completion.

[johnnyBv8]

C70R said:

Well, less than half an hour after the message above we had an email from our mortgage guy to say that everything is sorted. Thank God.

Not quite the rate we were offered in April, but still good and very happy to fix for a few years!

Time to start figuring out how the hell we fill 3,000sqft+ with furniture...

Congrats. My advice would be to live in it for a while with the furniture you already have, as what you think you need will probably change as you start to use the space. We moved from 1400 sqft to over 3000 sqft, and we weren’t desperate for more furniture!

[nickfrog]

kingston12 said:

Well that certainly sounds like the right way to do it! I assume that involved moving out of London/other City to somewhere that benefited from a COVID price increase before everyone else did the same?

That's another factor that is likely to affect future downsizing decisions, as most would be less inclined to make the same move today (from a purely perspective anyway)

I would love to take the credit but it was essentially luck.

Same town but from a nice area to an even nicer one and semi rural. We bought/stole a big but totally run down bungalow at the end of a cul de sac on the South Downs. Spent £110k renovating / extending / insulating which was 20% of our total budget which yielded an eventual 40% to 50% uplift in 3 years. Covid did help as well as the fact that the cost for the same work today would be around £150k.

[C70R]

johnnyBv8 said:

C70R said:

Well, less than half an hour after the message above we had an email from our mortgage guy to say that everything is sorted. Thank God.

Not quite the rate we were offered in April, but still good and very happy to fix for a few years!

Time to start figuring out how the hell we fill 3,000sqft+ with furniture...

Congrats. My advice would be to live in it for a while with the furniture you already have, as what you think you need will probably change as you start to use the space. We moved from 1400 sqft to over 3000 sqft, and we weren’t desperate for more furniture!

Sensible advice, with only one flaw. We're not selling our current property, so we'll literally be starting with a blank canvas.

[johnnyBv8]

C70R said:

johnnyBv8 said:

C70R said:

Well, less than half an hour after the message above we had an email from our mortgage guy to say that everything is sorted. Thank God.

Not quite the rate we were offered in April, but still good and very happy to fix for a few years!

Time to start figuring out how the hell we fill 3,000sqft+ with furniture...

Congrats. My advice would be to live in it for a while with the furniture you already have, as what you think you need will probably change as you start to use the space. We moved from 1400 sqft to over 3000 sqft, and we weren’t desperate for more furniture!

Sensible advice, with only one flaw. We're not selling our current property, so we'll literally be starting with a blank canvas.

Ah, ok. In that case, twist on the same principle is not to buy everything at the start!

[Wildfire]

C70R said:

God, mortgage companies are painful.

Our lender has been quiet for a week or so, and when prodded came back with a load of random questions about MrsC's income. That would all be ok had we not already provided 12mths of payslips, 12mths of bank statements, and a letter from her employer with it written clear as day.

There's no helping some people. Meanwhile, the vendor continues to get testy, probably because he knows he'd struggle to get the same money now if he needed to remarket.

How terminally dull.

Best thing I ever did was get a good mortgage broker! We went through this with our first property. Our first interview was around 4 hours and then we had to come back again, for another 2 and still they had questions.

This time round, spoke to the broker, went to the office once and that was it. No more issues.

[C70R]

Wildfire said:

C70R said:

God, mortgage companies are painful.

Our lender has been quiet for a week or so, and when prodded came back with a load of random questions about MrsC's income. That would all be ok had we not already provided 12mths of payslips, 12mths of bank statements, and a letter from her employer with it written clear as day.

There's no helping some people. Meanwhile, the vendor continues to get testy, probably because he knows he'd struggle to get the same money now if he needed to remarket.

How terminally dull.

Best thing I ever did was get a good mortgage broker! We went through this with our first property. Our first interview was around 4 hours and then we had to come back again, for another 2 and still they had questions.

This time round, spoke to the broker, went to the office once and that was it. No more issues.

Absolutely. Our broker has been ace throughout, and is a friend of a friend which makes dealing with him an absolute pleasure.

He told the seller's agent to chill his boots when he was pestering us for an approval certificate to take the property off the market (we didn't have one, but he knew it would be trivial and didn't want to do it until we'd had the inspection done), and got us a better rate than I can see anywhere by going direct. Lots of little touches like that which we wouldn't have benefitted from if we'd been another customer of a lender direct.

Happy to pass on his details if anyone would like?

[Sheets Tabuer]

Put my house up, got 11 viewings booked, 1st one offered the asking price.

[chardie_ph]

I don't post much but I moved today.
First saw the property I wanted (Mid Devon) online on the 24th Dec 21
Got my mortgage from Sarnie who was excellent and got me a very decent rate.
Sarnie recommended a solicitor, they were also excellent, professional and efficient from start to finish.
So, thanks to PH I got an excellent mortgage broker who in turn recommended an excellent solicitor.
I don't want to brag but the removals company I used were also spot on!
Thanks to all here that post and give recommendations and help those in need of advice.

[BigBen]

Was supposed to exchange today. Heard nothing so assume I didn't.

[Dsdans]

Sheets Tabuer said:

Put my house up, got 11 viewings booked, 1st one offered the asking price.

What sort of property?

I hear 2/3 beds selling like hotcakes still.

A few 4/5 beds I'm watching are just sat

[skwdenyer]

C70R said:

Wildfire said:

C70R said:

God, mortgage companies are painful.

Our lender has been quiet for a week or so, and when prodded came back with a load of random questions about MrsC's income. That would all be ok had we not already provided 12mths of payslips, 12mths of bank statements, and a letter from her employer with it written clear as day.

There's no helping some people. Meanwhile, the vendor continues to get testy, probably because he knows he'd struggle to get the same money now if he needed to remarket.

How terminally dull.

Best thing I ever did was get a good mortgage broker! We went through this with our first property. Our first interview was around 4 hours and then we had to come back again, for another 2 and still they had questions.

This time round, spoke to the broker, went to the office once and that was it. No more issues.

Absolutely. Our broker has been ace throughout, and is a friend of a friend which makes dealing with him an absolute pleasure.

He told the seller's agent to chill his boots when he was pestering us for an approval certificate to take the property off the market (we didn't have one, but he knew it would be trivial and didn't want to do it until we'd had the inspection done), and got us a better rate than I can see anywhere by going direct. Lots of little touches like that which we wouldn't have benefitted from if we'd been another customer of a lender direct.

Happy to pass on his details if anyone would like?

I’m in the market for a broker, so would be glad of a recommendation.

[OzzyR1]

skwdenyer said:

I’m in the market for a broker, so would be glad of a recommendation.

Look up a member on here called Sarnie, he is very good and has given me great pointers in the past.

There is actually a thread in the Finance section called "Mortgages with Sarnie" - will try to link below and if it works and you can read through you will see many thanks from long-standing PH members who value his expertise.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

PH doesn't allow links but you can email Sarnie (Liam) via his profile on that thread

Edited by OzzyR1 on Saturday 25th June 00:17

[heisthegaffer]

Interestingly when we were remortgaging for our new place, we compiled everything and submitted on the Monday. The following Friday we had a text stating it had been approved.

[Luke.]

Sheets Tabuer said:

Put my house up, got 11 viewings booked, 1st one offered the asking price.

Put my 2 bed flat on the market, London N1 on the canal, and barely had a sniff of interest. I think there's been 5 viewings since the beginning of May and not even a derisory offer.

[Chris Type R]

Dsdans said:

I hear 2/3 beds selling like hotcakes still.

Around our way that's certainly still true. We get the keys to a 2 bed second property on Monday. We're hoping to sell this on soon - once we've carved off some of the garden.