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@BrickMan
The sensible thing right now would be to sit tight, yes?
My mates parents have a gorgous very high end town house, renovated from ground up by them and professionals, spent a packet on it, but originally bought the shell at auction for not a lot in the mid 90s. Took them too long to decide to sell so missed the boom.
Spent prob £300k.
Worth at peak £550k
up for sale at £425k last summer, been on market for over a year now and moved agents
currently at £275k and still little interest (had maybe 5 viewings, total!)
Had a jokes offer @ £215k and from the sounds they are making, will probably roll with it!
Their both coming up to retirement and wanted to let a bit of cash out of house (I reckon about 25-50k) to settle all remaining debts & mortgage + cars etc, before moving into a new poorly built box house thing in a part of town thats normally on fire which has no garden, parking or anything. Price for the box is £265k or £295k one of the two.
Now, I've never owned a home, or actually anything more than a car, so maybe I'm not one to talk.
But surely, they've been putting money into that house (and the chain before that one) for their entire lives, with the vision that they could retire on time, debt free, and ideally in their cosy upmarket victorian town house, or less ideally but still happy in a little box house but with debts wiped out.
So instead of just hanging on to the proper house, they are possibly just about to throw it all away and end up having to take out another 50-75k on the existing mortgage (to enable them to live in a smaller, less pleasant, more expensive to run (higher rates & needs fitted out etc) house) which they will then be paying for until they bin it.
Now are they mad, or am I missing something really obvious?
Personally way things are going I'll be lucky if I can get hold of a derelict canal boat for a few £k and call that home. Deposits & mortgages will likely never happen for me in this country, personally rather live on a boat than be perpetually in debt, spend the money on traveling and doing fun stuff :D