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Average gains on house sales rose 12% to more than £100,000 by 2022, with Welsh homes making the highest returns
- A typical seller made £100,000 in gross profit on the sale of their home last year
- Despite the slowdown in house prices, 94% of sellers sold for more than they bought for
- Property sellers in Wales made higher percentage profits than Londoners
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The average home seller in England and Wales grossed more than £100,000 from their home in 2022, setting a new record.
In 2021, sellers who bought their home in the last 20 years earned an average of £96,220 on sales, 12 percent less than last year when the average profit was £108,000, Hamptons said.
The profit increase is due to the sale of larger homes, according to the real estate agency. Detached homes accounted for 19 percent of home sales in 2022 and 35 percent of properties generated six-digit profits for sellers.
Cashing in: Covid-era home price rises have led to record seller profits in 2022
Despite the slowdown in the real estate market towards the end of the year, last year 94 percent of sellers sold their home for more than they bought it for.
Home prices fell 1.5 percent in December, taking the average to £281,272, down from £285,425, according to Halifax’s latest house price index.
Regionally, 84 per cent of local authorities who saw the average homeowner earning more than £100,000 from property sales were in the south of England.
>> Read our overview of the real estate market forecasts for the coming year
Sellers are now seeing six-figure gains on their home sales in 52 per cent of local authorities, but London was the only region where the average household profit in each local authority exceeded £100,000 by 2022.
However, due to slower price growth in London, sellers in Wales are now making larger percentage gains on their home sales than Londoners.
In cash, sellers in the capital’s Kensington & Chelsea saw the biggest gains of any local authority, with the average household selling their home for £684,510 more than they paid for it on average 10.4 years ago
At the other end of the scale, properties sold in the North East saw an average profit of £37,890. The area had no local authorities with average profits in excess of £100,000.
Slow home price growth since the financial crash of 2008/2009 has left 14 percent of sellers losing money on their property, Hamptons says.
Commenting, Aneisha Beveridge, Head of Research at Hamptons said: “The record profits of 2022 were boosted by Covid-induced changes, with a rising share of sales coming from larger single-family homes that were typically purchased before the financial crisis.
However, most of these profits are never seen by sellers because they are reinvested in the housing market when they make their next purchase, which has also increased in value.
While there are some uncertainties in the market, it is likely that even if prices fall this year, more than 90 percent of sellers will still sell at a profit. The remaining 10 percent will mainly be apartment owners who have bought in the past five years.
“The shift from recent mortgaged homeowners selling lower-priced homes to older, more affluent homeowners selling higher-priced homes appears to be pushing up seller profits again this year.”