House just been valued

Jimuth

OT - but Dopester! 17 separate sessions (or windows) of Firefox open! That's some serious surfing! Do you have octopus-like dexterity?

Cazza

OP, I think putting your house on the market now is probably the better idea. To play devils advocate, what happens if you put it on the market in March and you don't sell?

If you put it on the market in September (when everyone's back from their summer holidays!) it allows you the time to assess your options, if you get an offer straight away, you can explain your situation to the purchaser and request completion in July 2008. This maens you move at the beginning of the Summer holidays and you can get settled in before the new term. If it takes a little longer to sell, then you have allowed yourself time to play with.

Worst case scenario (or best, depending on your opinion!), you have a purchaser in the first week who won't wait until next year. In this situation, you can rent for 6 months. Ok, renting isn't want you want to do long term, but it's not horrendous for 6 months and it means you can buy the next property without a chain, hopefully making the wohle process less stressful and more attractive to the vendor of the property you want.

Good luck!

neverdespairgirl

Maisie11 wrote: »

It is not essential that we move, however the school situation makes it difficult. The schools we are looking at get booked up 1-3 years in advance which is why we need to plan now. I know that some will say that private schools are going to take a hit with the credit crunch but I can guarantee that the schools we are looking at never have problems filling their spaces.

Do you have a Plan B if the children don't get in?

neverdespairgirl

GDB2222 wrote: »

Round where we are in London, a half-hour commute to school is the norm. In fact, my son catches a school coach, and it takes around 45 minutes (plus 10 minutes for him to get to the coach).

Ditto - I used to catch a school coach in Blackheath to go to school in Dulwich. Coach picked us up at 7.10am, and we got back about 4.40pm.

lostinrates

I did briefly board at six, and no, it isn't really to be recommended. 8 is a whole different ball game.

But a commute may well be. My neices had a long bus journey to their school from a train station, where they were dropped and retrieved from by a family mamber. The car journey was itro half hour, the bus itro 45 minutes. The bus was a good place to get help from older kids with homework..,.not that help wasn't available at home but because the older kids like to be older and a bit bossily helpful and he younger ones liked the attention from the older kids. other kids just slept though.

In all seriousness, until 8 yo the disruption might not be so great and you might be surprised about school flexibilty. Certainly they are were flexible in my case, and my neices joined a 'smart school' mid acedemic year when they came to live with me too.

meester

I take it you are in Denham/Gerrards Cross?

Anyway, I would sell now, ASAP.

There's plenty of nice properties to rent for ~£3k/month (which is peanuts, that's a £600,000 interest-only mortgage in effect) in most areas around the M25. Certainly here in Surrey, I could move into a lovely property within a couple of weeks without difficulty, so I wouldn't worry too much about the schooling, there'll be a nice rental available.

I am not quite sure I get the concept of 'releasing equity'. You are borrowing money, plain and simple, and need to pay it back.

I'm not sure how many children you have, but the need to borrow to fund school fees suggests to me that you're asset rich, cash poor, because if paying for school fees (£8k-£13k depending on age) is a problem, it suggests that the value of your house is very much excessive relative to your income, and selling, the ONLY way to truly release equity makes a lot of sense, and of course with luck you'll be able to buy something nicer cheaper in a year or two.

Maisie11

Meester,

My husband and I both work full time and earn way above the national average but we are in our late 40's. We intend to downsize slightly and move to West Oxford area and buy a place approx £700-£750k releasing some equity. I work for a big multi national but am home based for 80% of the time so have some flexibility.

School fees are huge. First child is boarding from Sept, second is only 6. School fees this year are £27K and going up once the oldest starts senior school in a couple of years. Current senior school boarding school fees are £26k per child!!! He has an offer at one of the big boarding schools already and is a natural boarder. We are also going to look at a day school. However releasing equity will make us very very comfortably off.

meester

Maisie11 wrote: »

Meester,

My husband and I both work full time and earn way above the national average but we are in our late 40's. We intend to downsize slightly and move to West Oxford area and buy a place approx £700-£750k releasing some equity. I work for a big multi national but am home based for 80% of the time so have some flexibility.

School fees are huge. First child is boarding from Sept, second is only 6. School fees this year are £27K and going up once the oldest starts senior school in a couple of years. Current senior school boarding school fees are £26k per child!!! He has an offer at one of the big boarding schools already and is a natural boarder. We are also going to look at a day school. However releasing equity will make us very very comfortably off.

Hmm yes £27k is a lot. £45k pre-tax. I don't think I'd be happy paying two lots of that, day school is certainly far more affordable.

You've probably got all the options by now. You might decide that you really can't live in a rented property under any circumstances, or otherwise you might feel that selling now and potentially saving £100k+ (10% fall in value over the next year) is worth the sacrifice. On the other hand, you can simply 'go with the flow' and stay where you are, move when you want to move (I take it when the school change happens) because even if delaying might cost you on the house price it realistically doesn't affect your lifestyle in any way whereas a punt on house prices does.

If you are going to move next year, you are going to 'withdraw' several hundred thousand simply by moving out of London, so there seems little reason to remortgage now.

SouthCoast

Just an anecdotal about Sussex as it is an area that I know.

Current properties on market for £1 million and upwards 540 (including some duplicates).

Number of properties sold for £1 million and upwards 1/1/2000 to 30/6/2008 673.


Update:
Average sales per month = 673 ÷ 102 months = average 6.6 sales per month.

Current stock 540 ÷ 6.6 = 81 months supply or 6 years 9 months supply.


Source:
Rightmove & houseprice.co.uk

Maisie11

All,

Thanks so much for the advice. I do like the idea of putting the house on the market in the next month or so and giving ourselves some leeway with regard to timing, we would consider renting for 6 months. Not ideal as we have a big dog which I understand some landlords are worried about but needs must. We are very flexible on rental area. Also means we dont end up panicing over Easter and looking at taking a low offer.

BTW, the Nationwide tell me that I can effectively freeze my mortgage for 6 months. We are on a 5 year fixed rate. They will charge early repayment charges (approx £8k) but we will get this back once we find a property within that 6 months. Does that sound right to you? Checked with two different call agents and they both confirmed that is correct. You cannot have a mortgage without a property but you can go back to the mortgage after 6 months when you buy something.....