List property in January or wait until March?

LondonEast

Hi all,

I am getting to ready to sell my leasehold flat (ex-local authority) in East London/Zone 2. I need to have moved into our preferred area in North London before my son is due to start school in September 2024, so ideally early summer 24.

I was planning to list my flat in early January but I'm now wondering if I should wait until March? I'd of course like to get as much as I can for it (I have plenty of debts to clear as well as needing a deposit to eventually buy again), but also keen to complete as quickly as possible. 

 The flat is very small and its chief selling point is the location - in a trendy neighbourhood, five mins from the tube and five mins from Victoria Park in the other direction. I imagine the flat will be bought by a first time buyer getting on the ladder who wants to live in this part of London. 

If I would like to complete by early summer, would there be any advantage to waiting until March to list the flat? I don't have a garden so nothing to show off on that front and the flat is very bright and light.

This was my first flat so I have no previous experience of selling. Any opinions welcome!

Thank you 😊 

MeteredOut

You need to try to get an idea of how the market for that type of property have been selling in your area. Have any other flats been on the market recently? Have you spoken to any estate agents for advice (although i guess most will try to get you to sign up with them and tell you now is the right time).

JM68

Are you saying March as you think (or have been told) that is the best time to list and sell?

If so, that is a bit of an urban myth, stuff sells all year round.  Where it comes from I think is the notion that families all want to complete by the time the new school year start, so they all list and look for onward purchases in spring.  But this not borne out by sales stats, and would not in any event apply to your type of property.

Or because you think (or have been told) that there will be some kind of 'spring bounce' in the market?

If so, I am not sure that will happen in 2025 as the interest rate rises (which are the main cause of the market downturn) are forecast to be with us much longer.

Either way, selling a 1-bed, for what you might consider to be a 'good price', may be hard, whether listed in Jan or March.

Most 1-beds in inner London are sold to FTBs or Buy-to-Letters.  The former are struggling with the new interest rates and the bottom has completely fallen out of the latter market.

We managed to sell our 1-bed in zone 2 SW London just before the Liz Truss fiasco.  We are still in touch with old neighbours and three other flats in our old block have come on and been taken off again without sale since we moved.  One was owner occupier who paid too much, so needed a higher offer than she could get in the current market, the other two were BTL trying to exit the market.

If it were me, I would list in Jan so you can get a better and sooner feel for the market and the price you might have to accept to sell the flat, and check your plans will work around that. 

One further point to bear in mind is that with the downturn in the market lots of Estate Agents seem to be overvaluing to get the initial instruction only then to say you need to lower the price a month or so later.

Good luck!

silvercar

List in January, there will be buyers just waiting for Christmas to be over to make their move. Wait and they could have bought elsewhere before yours has hit the market.

LondonEast

Thank you, MeteredOut, JM68 and Silvercar for your replies.

I was indeed thinking of listing in March because I had read (in the money pages of the broadsheets) that the market is stronger then. I haven't heard this from any estate agents though. But from your replies, I will go with my gut and list in January. As you have said, JM68, I will soon get a sense of what appetite for the property there is. Hopefully there will be a few folk out there whose parents have gifted them a hefty deposit for Christmas!

I have been obsessively researching the local market (looking at the land registry, Zoopla etc) and ex-local one beds have sold this year, some at the kind of price I'd like to get and a couple at £20-30K less. I had one valuation with a local estate agent who was very negative and gave me a low figure, the other valuation, from an online estate agent, was much higher. I am sceptical because I have heard that online agents are known to inflate prices but on the other hand, the valuations came with a market report that gave examples of comparable properties within a quarter mile that have sold this year and only one was less than the figure I have in my head as the minimum I can accept. This online agent came to my attention because it sold a property in my block a couple of months ago. It is a three-bed property so not directly comparable with mine but it sold within a couple of weeks at the asking price.

I think I need to get another couple of valuations, even though I am worried about them confirming the lower valuation 😬. In summer 2022 my property was valued much higher than both the valuations I've had this year so I am still cursing Liz Truss and Kwasi Karteng for tanking the market!

I am pretty desperate to sell, but not desperate enough to sell and not have a decent chunk towards a deposit from the sale so worst case scenario, I will rent it out for a few years (at a loss) and wait until the market recovers. We will be renting in North London initially anyway.

Thanks again for the replies, much appreciated.

BobT36

" In summer 2022 my property was valued much higher than both the valuations I've had this year so I am still cursing Liz Truss and Kwasi Karteng for tanking the market!"

Well, yeah. We've had a tonne of interest rate rises since then. What goes up must (should!) come down. Did ya expect infinite growth? 

RelievedSheff

If you want to move by summer you had better get it on the market now!

MeteredOut

I'd not recommend becoming a landlord solely because you cannot sell a property for the price you want. Do it because you want to become a landlord.