Hell of being trapped in an unsellable flat: No viewings, plunging prices and hollow promises have wrecked the market. Now owner Helen reveals the terrible consequences - and says 'it feels like a noose around our necks'
Every evening when their eight-month-old daughter is asleep, Helen Colville and her husband Mark sit in near silence, trying desperately not to wake her.
‘Being crammed into a studio flat I bought seven years ago isn’t how I imagined starting family life,’ says Helen, 34, a pastry chef.
Aged 28, in March 2019 she had purchased the flat in Harlington, west London, for £150,000, having put down a deposit of £40,000.
Seven years on she is desperate to sell up and move to a family home with her husband, who moved in with her in 2022, and daughter. But since putting the flat on the market in April 2024 she’s had two sales fall through just before completion – and zero viewings since last November.
What she once saw as a savvy financial investment has become a millstone around her neck – one that is severely curtailing her family life and even preventing her from trying for another child.
Flats were once seen as an exciting first rung on the property ladder. Less expensive to buy and maintain than houses, owners assume they’ll be easy to sell on when the time comes to move up the ladder.
But that promise has proven hollow in recent times.
In the past two years, the property market has been dealt countless blows, leaving thousands of flat owners trapped in properties they cannot sell or, at best, facing selling at a substantial loss.
Helen bought her flat in Harlington, west London, for £150,000 in March 2019, but she has desperately struggled to sell it since putting it on the market two years ago
Part of the problem is due to the Renters’ Rights Act, which comes into effect in May and has prompted swathes of landlords to sell off their rental properties, leaving the market awash with flats.
There were more than 14 per cent more flats on the market last year than in 2024 and figures last month revealed that there are more properties for sale so far in 2026 than there have been in eight years.
What’s more, rocketing mortgage rates and ever-rising service charges leave prospective first-time buyers – the demographic historically looking to buy flats like Helen’s – priced out of ownership entirely.
All of which leaves sellers like Helen not knowing where to turn. Unable to sell her flat or to afford a larger family home without the equity in it, she’s left crammed into a space measuring just under 100 square feet with Mark – who is retraining for a job in IT having recently been made redundant – and baby Freya.
Helen says: ‘We have to keep the pram and changing bag in the boot of my car, the Moses basket at Freya’s grandparents’ house and have to keep toys and clothes to an absolute minimum to save space.
‘The hardest part is that we’d have loved to have started trying for another child so that they’d be close in age to Freya but we can’t take that gamble while we’re squeezed into such a small flat.’
On paper, Helen’s studio has a lot going for it. In a block of nine flats built in the 1980s, it boasts a communal garden, parking, excellent transport links to London and Heathrow and has the Grand Union Canal close by for walks.
The Renters’ Rights Act, which comes into effect in May, has prompted swathes of landlords to sell off their properties, writes Sadie Nicholas, leaving the market over-saturated with flats
Property expert Simon Gerrard says Labour's removal of support like Help to Buy has hurt affordability
She’s completely renovated it, plastering and decorating and installing a new kitchen and bathroom, to the tune of £10,000. But at the current reduced asking price of £160,000, she would only just about break even.
Simon Gerrard, chairman of Martyn Gerrard Estate Agents in London, says: ‘When there is too much supply, prices won’t go up. Flats can be sold but the issue is many sellers can’t get the right price so they can afford to move up the ladder.
‘We need more first-time buyers to eat up the excess supply. Support like Help To Buy has gone and Labour have added extra stamp duty costs on top, which has hurt affordability.’
The costs aren’t just hurting buyers. Helen has run up £1,000 in abandoned conveyancing fees for buyers that have pulled out. ‘We accepted an offer for the full asking price of £165,000 a few weeks after putting the flat up for sale but six months later, in November 2024, the buyer ghosted us without warning or explanation as we were nearing exchange and completion,’ she says.
‘It was incredibly upsetting as we’d had an offer accepted on a house we loved in Farnborough and had imagined living there, how we’d furnish and decorate it. We lost that.’
Helen then dropped the price by £5,000 and accepted an offer for £160,000 soon after it went back on the market – only for the buyer to pull out two weeks before completion another six months later in June 2025. It meant Helen – who was heavily pregnant at the time – and Mark lost out on a second house they had put in an offer on in Bracknell.
‘If we had a home like the ones we’ve lost out on, we’d be able to put Freya to sleep in her own lovely room and Mark and I could have more date nights at home, chatting freely without panicking that any noise will wake her up.
‘That’s one of the things that upset me the most – that Freya wouldn’t have her own pretty nursery and we wouldn’t experience the joy of furnishing and decorating it for her. I had to stop myself looking at nursing chairs and changing tables when her due date was imminent because there’s nowhere to put them in the flat.’
Readers may be wondering why conveyancing would take six months, when a straightforward property sale should take around 12 weeks.
Although the majority of properties in England and Wales are freehold, meaning the owner owns the property and the land it stands on, flats are generally leasehold, with a specific time period for ownership, after which ownership reverts to the freeholder. In Helen’s case, there are just 89 years remaining on the lease.
However, would-be buyers are typically advised to avoid any property with a lease less than 99 years. Indeed, many lenders won’t provide a mortgage on a property with a lease less than 85 years.
Yet extending the lease costs several thousands at a minimum. ‘Even inquiring about the cost of extending the lease costs money,’ Helen adds.
For now, she and her husband have shelved plans of finding a new home until the flat sells. ‘Mark and I both save really hard and we’ve done all the right things to sell the flat. But here we are, no further on than we were almost two years ago. We desperately want to be able to settle in a new home where Freya can have her own bedroom and a garden to play in, and we can properly enjoy being a little family.’
Helen can’t afford to drop the price of the property any more without it affecting her ability to buy the sort of family home they now need.
‘My flat is still one of the cheapest on the market but far from being the wise investment I once thought it to be, it currently feels like a noose around our necks.’
