Property sellers cashing in with £60k profit

Some 91 per cent of sellers sold their property for more than they paid for it, edging up from 90 per cent in 2017, Hamptons International found.

In the West Midlands, the average profit made on a house sale in our region was £58,450, according to the figures.

But that figure is below the national average profit of £88,470.

Figures released today show that owners owned their home for an average of nine years before selling it.

While the proportion of sellers making a profit increased, the average gain edged slightly down compared with £90,580 nationally in 2017.

Sellers in the South East were less likely to sell their house for a profit in 2018 than they were the year before.

In all other regions house sellers were more likely to sell for a profit in 2018.

In the West Midlands, Warwick was a property hotspot, with the average profit on a house £108,510.

Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons International, said: “With more sellers in the North but fewer sellers in London making a profit in 2018, the average gain has fallen since 2017.”

She said this was because sellers in the North do not tend to make gains as large as those in the South, but despite some recent slowdowns in house price growth “most owners are still sitting on plenty of growth from previous years”. Hamptons International analysed Land Registry data to make the findings.

It purely looked at house sale prices, so the findings do not take into account moving-related costs such as stamp duty that sellers may incur which would eat into any gains made on the sale.

It also looked at the hotspots where sellers were particularly likely to make large gains last year. While leafier areas like Shropshire pushed up the West Midlands average, profits were far lower in urban areas of the region.

In London, sellers in Kensington and Chelsea made an average profit of £992,340, with 93 per cent making a gain. This equates to 11 times the UK average.