Property

Trading up: when to move home

Quidsmith Guides · Updated 2026-07-03 · 5 min read

The home you buy first is no longer the home you are stuck with. You can move up or down between three tiers, a flat, a house or a detached home, selling the current place and rolling its equity into the next. Moving is not free, so it is a decision worth weighing.

How a move works

When you already own and choose a different tier, the game sells your current home (its equity, after any mortgage, rolls straight in) and buys the new one at its market price. You pay cash or take a fresh mortgage on the difference, plus two costs on top: stamp duty and moving costs.

The costs of moving

A home move attracts residential Stamp Duty, charged in progressive bands, plus about 2% in agent, legal and removal fees. The SDLT bands are fixed in today's money, so as house prices rise over a lifetime, moves quietly creep into the higher bands, the same fiscal drag that catches real movers.

A first purchase from renting is left stamp-duty-free (first-time-buyer relief); the bands only bite when you move.

Owning is not free: maintenance

Every owned home costs roughly 1.2% of its value each year in upkeep, insurance and council tax. A bigger, pricier home is a bigger, pricier home to run, so upsizing raises your standing costs as well as your stamp-duty bill.

When to trade up, and down

Upsize when you have both the equity and the income to run a larger place, and enough years left for its growth to outweigh the moving costs. Downsizing works the other way: late in life it frees a chunk of equity cleanly, without the roll-up interest of equity release, which is why it is often the better way to tap the home.