Stop Waiting for the Property Market to Be Perfect

“Maybe we should wait and see what happens with interest rates.”

It’s a conversation taking place around plenty of kitchen tables at the moment. And it’s completely understandable.

The Bank of England has today held Bank Rate at 3.75% again, against a backdrop of continuing uncertainty around inflation and borrowing costs.

For anyone thinking about moving home, news like this inevitably raises questions.

Should we wait? Will mortgage rates come down? Could house prices change? Will there be more properties to choose from in six months? Would we be better off moving next year?

The problem is that if you’re waiting for the property market to become perfect, you could be waiting for a very long time.

What would a “perfect” market actually look like?

For most movers, it would probably involve:

• Low mortgage rates
• Plenty of properties to choose from
• Strong demand for their existing home
• Little competition for the home they want to buy
• Rising prices when they sell
• Lower prices when they buy

There’s a slight problem.

Some of those things contradict each other.

A market that’s fantastic for sellers can be more challenging for buyers. A market offering buyers lots of negotiating power might mean sellers need to be more realistic too.

And, of course, many people are both.

If you’re selling one property to buy another, you’re moving within the same market.

That’s important.

Don’t look at your sale in isolation

Imagine your home might have achieved £400,000 in a stronger market but today a realistic selling price is £390,000.

It’s easy to focus on the £10,000 difference and decide to wait.

But what about the house you’re buying?

If a property previously worth £600,000 can now be negotiated to £580,000, the wider transaction looks rather different.

This won’t happen in every case, and different types of property can behave differently.

But it’s why we encourage sellers to look at the whole move, rather than becoming fixated on one number.

What matters isn’t simply what you sell for.

It’s what you sell for, what you buy for, the difference between the two and whether the move works financially and practically for you.

Interest rates matter – but they’re only part of the decision

There’s no getting away from the fact that borrowing costs matter.

For buyers using a mortgage, the rate available can make a meaningful difference to monthly payments and affordability.

But predicting where rates will be in six months or a year’s time is another matter entirely.

Even Bank Rate doesn’t translate directly into a particular mortgage rate. Fixed mortgage pricing is influenced by a range of factors, and lenders can change their products independently.

Waiting because you’ve calculated that today’s move doesn’t work for your finances is one thing.

Waiting solely because you’re hoping to perfectly predict what interest rates will do next is something quite different.

What if house prices change while you’re waiting?

This is another difficulty with trying to time a move perfectly.

Suppose mortgage rates improve. Great.

But what if increased buyer confidence then creates more competition for the type of property you want?

Or prices change? Or there are fewer suitable homes available in your chosen area?

Equally, prices could soften further or a better mortgage product could become available.

Nobody can promise which combination of circumstances we’ll see next. That’s exactly the point.

There is always something you could wait for.

Your life doesn’t follow the property market

This is perhaps the biggest consideration of all.

People don’t usually move home because a graph tells them to.

They move because:

A family is growing.

The children have left home.

They need another bedroom.

They want a bigger garden.

They’re relocating for work.

They want to be closer to family.

The stairs are becoming inconvenient.

They’ve fallen in love with a particular village.

Their current home simply doesn’t suit their life anymore.

Market conditions matter, but so does the reason you wanted to move in the first place.

If your current home is making everyday life difficult, postponing a move for another year has a cost too – even if that cost doesn’t appear on a spreadsheet.

Waiting can sometimes be absolutely right

We’re certainly not suggesting everybody should rush out and put their home on the market.

Sometimes waiting makes perfect sense.

Perhaps you need to improve your financial position.

Maybe your employment circumstances are changing.

Perhaps there genuinely isn’t anything available that suits what you need.

Or your mortgage adviser may tell you that the numbers simply don’t work comfortably at the moment.

Those are meaningful reasons.

The distinction is between waiting for a reason and waiting for perfection.

One is a plan.

The other can become an endless cycle of:

“Let’s see what happens next month.”

Work with the market you’ve actually got

At Ellis Winters, we’d love to be able to tell homeowners exactly where house prices, mortgage rates and buyer demand will be this time next year.

We can’t.

Nobody can with certainty.

What we can do is tell you what’s happening in your local market now.

What are homes like yours actually selling for?

How much competition is there?

How long are sales taking?

What are buyers responding to?

What’s available in the area you’re hoping to move to?

And, importantly, what might the numbers look like across your whole move?

Those are questions we can answer with information that exists today.

You don’t need a perfect market. You need a move that works for you.

Today’s interest-rate headlines will inevitably cause some people to reconsider their plans.

Next month, there will be another headline.

Then another set of house-price figures.

Then another forecast.

Property markets are always moving.

Your goal doesn’t have to be selling at the absolute top, buying at the absolute bottom and securing the lowest mortgage rate anybody will ever see.

That’s an extraordinarily difficult combination to achieve.

A successful move is one where the numbers are manageable, the timing makes sense and you end up in a home that better suits what you need next.

So perhaps the question isn’t:

“Is now the perfect time to move?”

Perhaps it’s:

“Does moving now make sense for us?”

If you’re considering selling and want to understand what your home could realistically achieve in the current market, speak to your local Ellis Winters team. We offer a free, no-obligation property valuation and can talk you through what’s happening in your area – so you can make your decision with real local information rather than trying to predict the next headline.