Having spent a little over 23 years in the house in which we brought up our children (they were both born before we moved in), my wife and I recently sold up and moved into a smaller house – a term particularly known as ‘downsizing’. The UK’s Guardian newspaper recently ran a piece claiming that one of the things that is limiting growth in the UK economy is older people not selling their houses when they no longer need the space. Some of this was also attributed to a lack of building the right properties for older people to move into (they typically want gardens and not flats). Whilst this is an issue country-wide, I suspect likely to be less so in London where there is plenty of property choice on offer.
The process is wrought with challenges. Would we find a place with enough space for our stuff, do we still need rooms for our adult children, do we want to move in the same area and what are the financial implications? Whilst our kids have long since moved out, we wanted to stay in the area. Finding a house to buy wasn’t difficult, but having promised our buyer that we would commit to move on a certain date, the house we found fell through after a few weeks due to a problem with one of the vendor’s property sale falling through – not uncommon in the UK housing market. At the start, we had a very small chain of 3, and all seemed to be going swimmingly. The first problem that arose was the vendor’s partner, not realising until the conveyancing process had started, that due to a change in Government policy, they would be liable for a significant Stamp Duty charge if they didn’t sell their property, which seemed to have been fixed when they put the flat up for sale and had an offer fairly quickly. We then discovered a separate issue had arisen around some building work being done by the owner of the property below theirs, relating to issues on party wall agreements for development work and a conflict on whether the agreement had to be agreed before both parties signed their freehold agreement (and to think we once considered buying a flat) and as a result the whole thing grinded to a halt.
My first thought when the latter problem arose was to try to find ways to make the vendor's problem go away. Could we take a small stake in the vendor's house by paying a deposit, seemingly simple from a commercial perspective, but a no-go when suggested to our lawyer. Could the vendor’s partner with the problem move in with them to remove the Stamp Duty issue? Again, unlikely due to differences of opinion that had arisen between the direct vendor and their partner.
As a result, the biggest issue we had was how we managed time. We could, of course, have tried to seek an alternative completion date with our buyer, but we were aware that the London housing market had recently experienced a downturn and any foray into this area would likely have resulted in us making a concession (most likely price). They had also previously lost out on a house at ‘the last minute’, pre-exchange of contracts, so having surety on a move date was a significant priority for them. So, in the absence of a house to move to immediately, we decided to ride it out with the help of some friends, holidays, and a month-long Airbnb (potentially for starters). Having thought that we could be nomads for 3-6 months, we found a house a couple of weeks before moving out, and the whole process took only 7 weeks before we moved in early September. There was also something nice about having the proceeds of the house sale in the bank for a few weeks and the interest accrued covered most of our extra costs.
Would I have planned it this way, certainly not. However, managing time, having alternatives, and the right decision-making, even the most difficult scenarios can be overcome, and we’ve definitely benefitted both financially and emotionally from factors being at play that were largely beyond our control, and we’ve ended up in a much better place in a house we love.
