Knowing the Right Time to Find a New Family Home in the UK Market

Sometimes, you’re left with little choice but to move you and your family to a new home. Other times, you can earn yourself a bit more time and target the ideal moment to get a move rolling. To gauge this, as someone who’s looking to sell their family home and move to one with perhaps more rooms or better schools nearby, it’s best to look at the current market conditions and how months generally go for buyers and sellers.

In the UK, with the stamp duty rise coming into effect at the beginning of spring, house prices dropped. The fall of 0.5 per cent, on average in March was the biggest in a year. While that isn’t great overall, in some places, the hit would have been less or even non-existent as some regions are more lively than others. For a potential buyer, it could mean lower prices in one place while selling in a strong area, ideally. Of course, there’s more to weigh up, too.

Best Time to Sell as a Homeowner

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While anyone can sell a house at any time, as it’ll always come down to the ideal buyer happening to come along at the right moment, there are statistically better months to list. According to estate agents, February and March are the best times to put a house on the market. Their stats relay that around two-thirds of all properties listed in these end-of-winter months sell within a year.

This plays into the general rules of the ideal selling times. In the spring, around the Easter holidays, the weather’s warmer, people are looking to go out and view more, and they want to be set before the more pleasant summer months ahead. On the other side, July in August offers the perks of being a window during the school holidays, offering the prime time to move with minimal disruption to learning.

Even in these ideal months to sell, there are the usual rigours of the housing market to wrangle. The dreaded chain ends many, many potential deals, while some people simply take a lot more time than you’d like to make a call. So, regardless of the time of year, there’s an alternate selling option. If you want the best way for selling your house fast in the UK, the cash online buyer is an option. You fill in a form, get a cash offer, and then complete when you see fit.

Best Time to Buy a New Home

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Whenever you’re going on the hunt for a new home, property needs have to take priority. Even if the stats say that one month is a better time to buy than the next, you shouldn’t concede on what you want from your new family home. Always make sure that, at a minimum, your bedroom and bathroom needs are met even if the next month might see a price rise on average.

That to one side, the best time to try to buy a new home tends to be spring. As noted, people are generally encouraged to list just before spring, giving you more options than usual. However, there are more buyers, so it’s important to be nimble and ready to go. Being able to bid on a house and tell the owners that you’re doing so without a chain can help to swing the odds in your favour.

Naturally, spring isn’t always the ideal time to move – especially if it’s a move across the country – for a whole family when you consider the implications for schooling, but there are benefits to doing so as a buyer and seller.