Q. I bought my property right at the top of the market in 2007 when the market was booming; in fact I was involved in a bidding war to secure the property. My situation has now changed and I need to find a larger property to accommodate my growing family. The problem is I had 3 agents in yesterday who have all told me that my property is worth around ﾣ50,000 less than what I paid for it. As you can imagine given the market conditions I expected it to have dropped in price but this news is devastating, what do you suggest I do?
A. Yes this truly is disastrous for you and something none of us in our wildest dreams could have predicted, certainly I remember that crazy year well when sellers could demand any price for any property as there was a constant a queue of people ready to buy and prepared to out bid someone else in order to secure the property. Now the market has started to recover slightly and sellers like yourself are starting to think about selling again, I’m afraid those of you that were unfortunate enough to have bought around that time when the market was ridiculously overheated will find its not good news at all. As you have already discovered the values are significantly down on what you paid for the property. Depending on your situation you have 3 choices of course, the first one being you shelve your plans to move and sit tight until the market recovers which it will, albeit very slow. Secondly if you really need to sell up and move on you have no choice but to sell at a loss and just take advantage of this market and hope that you can pick up something cheap at the other end. Thirdly it’s worth looking at the possibility of renting the property out, that way if you can cover your costs, you could at least hold on to it until the market recovers and maybe even realise some profit if you are able to leave it for long enough? In my opinion this would be your best option given the circumstances. You would then be free to rent or perhaps buy something else now instead depending on your personal circumstances.