Hello

I know some of you on this forum will think I am totally bonkers asking this, but thought I would put it out there for general opinion anyway.

We are hoping to move to Canada initially under a TWP in approximately 18mths to 2 years time - as long as my OH can find a job of course!! With this in mind we put our house on the market and planned to rent should we be so lucky as to sell.

After many months and a few viewings we now have an offer 10K short of the asking price.

We are both quite shocked as we got used to not selling. I know that sounds weird but having being so focused on gearing up to move to Canada, we hadn't really thought seriously about having to rent a house here beforehand for ourselves, what it would be like, the costs, whether house prices will fall/rise/stay the same etc etc - and now it's really real.

In my position would you:

a) sell and pray that house prices stay the same or fall OR
b) stay put and pray that house prices by some miracle will have started to recover by August 2010????

If only I could have a crystal ball - I don't want to sell my house now only to find that the housing market has picked up in another 12 mths, and we have been living in rented accommodation needlessly!! I have certainly started to have more viewings in the last 3 weeks and I also know of a couple of other people who have sold their house in the last coule of weeks in this area. It seems even the analysts don't know what house prices will do - different reports have different forecasts, it's sooooo confusing.

Have things started to pick up in your area?? Have any more of you sold, I know there have been a couple on here recently. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rubie

Hi Rubie,
That's a bit of a tough one bearing in mind he timescales you are talking about.
What happens if your OH gets a job offer before 18 months. At least if you've got the cash in the bank your free to go as and when you get the chance. I'm not sure anyone can predict what will happen with property in the future, but I don't think there will be too much of an increase in house prices within 12 months at least. However I'm not an expert on these things, just my opinion.
I'm sure a few others will be able to give you some more advice.
Good luck.

Unless you really love your house and think you would never be able to find another one like it and dont care about the money, then sell it.

You will certainly loose money on it over the next few years as the UK housing market will carry on heading downwards for at least the next 2 to 3 years if not longer. Remember that during the last UK property price crash in the early 90s it took over 10 years for prices to recover to their original levels.

I'm pretty certain this one wont be any less painful. Official govet forecasts are for certainly continued downward trend in prices for this year and next. And now (in the last few days) the news is that the UK economy is in serious trouble and headed for a prolonged decline/recession. That will probably make the estimates for the housing market even more depressing.

So sell it and, if you want to go back to the UK in 2010, you will probably be able to buy your same house back (or equivalent) for around 20-30% less.

hi
we've just had four estate agents out over the past two days (trust me, i'm done in with sales talk) and in honesty.....SELL.....houses prices are tumbling in this country. if we had sold our house last year we would have achieved what we where asking; now, however we have have had 30% wiped off in the past six months and an expected 10% drop over every month heading for 2009......SELL

You should not rely on anyone...you should make the decision on your own and then live with the decision you took.

To make that easier for you: read Anthony Robbins: Neuro linguistic programming.

Wishing you the best

Rubie -

Id sell... the UK economy doesn't exactly seem great or inspire confidence, and most city types seem to feel its gonna get worse for at least 2 years !

Rent a place, put the cash in the Northern Rock Bank (the safest place for money at the moment seeing our government owns it and guarantees funds), and open a currency trading facility so, if the opportunity arises, you can make a killing on the CAN $.

Good luck.

M.

Thanks for all your replies.

It's a tough one that, as you say Gipsy only we can decide, it is however nice to get other people's opinions. Thanks for the tip on NLP - I've looked into that in the past, maybe it's time to give it another visit!!

NSPaul - no we don't particularly love our house or think we couldn't get another like it so we will sell, but I suppose it's also good to question our decisions to make sure we are doing the right thing.

Good luck to all out there trying to sell at the mo!

Rubie x

I would take the money and run Rubie, you might kick yourself in a couple of years, but it is your decision, good luck with whatever you decide x

The market hitting rock bottom doesn't affect all of the UK though. Prices around here in the early 90's merely stagnated for a few years. The stats say they've dipped 5% over the last year, but I don't see that reflected in the advertised prices, they are still as high as ever. The number of actual completions has hit rock bottom though, but apparently a lot are waiting to see what happens with the Stamp Duty.

We are in a shared-ownership house, so we should be able to get rid of it pretty quickly because it's hard for local people to buy at the price levels around here. We bought early March '06 - not quite the top of the peak, but we couldn't move if the prices dipped more than 15% without moving into negative equity and defaulting to get to Canada.

I would imagine thats why there are no completions - what buyers are prepared to pay has dropped significantly but sellers refuse to accept it and continue to hope for high prices. Therefore nothing sells. Its a sort of stand-off between the two sides. It probably has little to do with stamp duty.

If we could turn back the clock, we would have sold at the start of the year and rented until we get our visas. We have just sold for £25K less than we wanted for the house - and that included all the furniture!!
Unfortunately, no-one has a crystal ball and no-one knows what the future holds. Only you know what the right thing to do is. Good luck either way