Good morning everyone. For what it is worth, I have been reading posts here for a few weeks now and thought I would finally contribute something of my own.
I am recently retired and living in a market town near Penrith. We have a four bedroom detached which has been our family home for over twenty years, but with the children long gone and my husband’s knees not getting any friendlier with the stairs, we are starting to think seriously about downsizing. Ideally a two or three bed bungalow or dormer with a decent garden, staying within about fifteen miles of where we are now.
The thing making me hesitate is the market. Prices around here seem to be softening a little, and I saw the Rightmove data suggesting a further dip by year end. Do we sell now and risk getting less than we might have six months ago, or wait and risk it sliding further? I would love to hear from anyone who has been through a similar move, particularly around the timing question. Did you regret waiting, or were you glad you did?
Blencathra, welcome. Your situation resonates with me, although I stayed put in the end and just threw money at making the house work for the longer term instead.
On the timing question, I think the honest answer is that nobody has ever successfully timed a property sale. If you are selling and buying in the same market, the relative position tends to wash out anyway; your four bed comes down a bit, but so does the bungalow you are buying. The real risk is doing nothing and watching both of you struggle with stairs for another three years while waiting for an upturn that may or may not arrive.
Penrith is a lovely spot and I suspect decent bungalows with gardens do not hang around long up there, even in a soft market. If I were you I would start viewing now to calibrate your expectations, even before you list. You will learn more in three viewings than in three months of Rightmove refreshing 
One thing worth flagging is that bungalows hold their value stubbornly even in a falling market, because the demographic that wants them, retirees and downsizers, is only growing. You might find that your four bed detached drops 5% but the bungalow you want barely moves. The gap is often smaller than people expect. Worth running the actual numbers on a few specific examples before assuming you will pocket a large surplus from the move.
Grumpy makes an excellent point about bungalows holding value, and I think the flip side is worth Blencathra considering too. If you are selling a four bed detached in the current market, you may find it sits for longer than you would like. The data out this morning suggests homes for sale are at a 12 year high for this time of year, which in plain English means more competition for sellers and less urgency from buyers. The asking price data shows a modest uptick but that is masking a lot of regional variation.
I know someone locally who sold a similar sized house in Lyndhurst earlier this year and it took five months from listing to exchange, with two price reductions along the way. The bungalow they bought, by contrast, went to sealed bids within a fortnight. So the arithmetic of downsizing can look favourable on paper but the timing mismatch is the thing that catches people out. Worth thinking about whether selling first and renting briefly might give you more negotiating power on the purchase side.
For what it is worth, I viewed a bungalow yesterday afternoon in Carnforth. Three bedrooms, decent sized garden backing onto open fields, and priced at £285,000 which felt about right for the area. The condition was reasonable but the kitchen and bathroom would both need doing within a year or two, so in reality you are looking at closer to £310,000 all in.
Grumpy’s point about bungalows holding their value is exactly what I found. The agent told me they had two other viewings booked for this week and expected it to go quickly. Whether that is true or just agent talk I cannot say, but it does not feel like the sort of market where you can take your time. I am going to sleep on it over the weekend and see if it is still there on Monday.
Blencathra, £285k for a three bed bungalow in Carnforth sounds about right but my question would be what is the layout like inside. I have been looking for a bungalow since June and every single one I view has been messed about with. Open plan kitchen diners where you can smell last night’s curry from the sofa, en suites carved out of the main bedroom so the room itself is barely big enough for a double bed, loft conversions that technically give you an extra room but require climbing a ladder at 57. What happened to a simple hallway, three bedrooms, a separate kitchen and a lounge with a door you can close? I took early reduncency in March and thought I would find something by summer. Six months on and I am still looking. The stock is there, as everyone keeps saying, but the quality of it is genuinely poor.
Pat, you have described my exact frustration. The Carnforth bungalow was actually one of the better ones, a proper entrance hall and a separate kitchen, though the previous owner had knocked through to create an open plan living and dining area which I could probably live with. The bedroom sizes were reasonable too. But I take your point entirely. So many have been modernised in ways that defeat the purpose of a bungalow in the first place.
Blencathra, glad its not just me losing my mind over this. I viewed one last week near Chorley that had been advertised as a three bed bungalow with a modern kitchen. Turned up and the previous owner had knocked through the kitchen into the dining room AND the hallway to create one enormous open plan space that was basically a corridor with a cooker in it. The estate agent kept saying how much light it let in as if that compensated for having nowhere to put a table without blocking the front door. I asked where you would eat and she said most buyers use a breakfast bar. I am 57 not 27. I want a dining table. The search continues but I am starting to wonder whether what I actually want is a time machine back to 1985 when bungalows were built with rooms in them!!!
Drove past a bungalow on the way back from my sisters today, it was one I spotted on Rightmove Friday evening, proper detached two bed with a garage and what looked like a decent sized rear garden. Got home, rang the agent, already sold subject to contract. Listed Thursday, SSTC by Saturday lunchtime. Meanwhile the open plan monstrosities with bifold doors and no hallway have been sitting there since July. The good ones are being snapped up before you can even get through the front door and the dross just lingers. I am starting to think I need to be ringing agents proactively and asking them to call me before anything hits the portals, because by the time it is on Rightmove it is already too late.