LM portfolio as at 06/06/2025:
| Code | Sector | Date Bought | Cost | Value | Gain/Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LM055 LM055-2 LM055-3 |
General Financial | 11/01/2023 02/05/2023 20/12/2023 |
£3850 | £8990 | 133.79% |
| LM079 LM079-2 LM079-3 |
No specific Industry | 22/02/2024 16/10/2024 03/12/2024 |
£4310 | £5060 | 17.44% |
| LM084 | Food Producers | 21/10/2024 | £1520 | £1620 | 6.92% |
| LM086 LM086-2 |
Banks | 02/12/2024 10/02/2025 |
£3040 | £3530 | 16.08% |
| LM087 | Fixed Line Telecommunications | 02/12/2024 | £1520 | £1660 | 9.06% |
| LM089 | Investment Services | 06/01/2025 | £1530 | £1600 | 5.10% |
| LM090 LM090-2 |
Aerospace & Defense | 06/01/2025 23/04/2025 |
£3040 | £3950 | 29.70% |
I'm going to write some of this down as a record of what happened this week because it was pleasantly surprising and, with the plans we subsequently have in place, I want to be able to look back at this entry in the future with a reliable recollection of events.
It all started last Saturday when our friend offered to look after our darling 3-year old for a couple of hours so we could go out for breakfast. On the way home - it's a short walk round the corner - I suggested popping in to an estate agent to ask about the process for putting our house up for sale.
We've always planned to move from our current house and with me having a new job, our nursery fees coming to an end in a couple of months and my wife considering going back to work full time it seemed to be a good time to try and figure out what we would need to do to upscale.
A few days later the valuer arrived to have a look at our house and then gave us a "marketable value" i.e. the price we should list our house at... as is.
First of all, the "value" was pleasantly surprising. Quite a bit more than we expected.
We're not daft, we know it's unlikely we'll achieve that amount exactly but even if we get close it means we have a lot of equity and this translates to a decent 'deposit' for our next purchase.
And second, we have several areas in the house which really need a little attention such as plastered walls that haven't been painted, wallpaper rips where the cats have torn off strips and some carpet that could probably do with replacing.
We asked if we would need to get all that sorted out prior to listing for sale but the general opinion was no.
No - leave it be, the purchasers would probably want to decorate anyway and so any money we spent on making the house look nice would most likely be wasted. We can splash the cash but it is likely we wouldn't get the money back because it wouldn't make any difference to the sale price.
This made sense. Next door our neighbours, who only moved in at Christmas, have just put in new carpets in several areas when we know the previously owners had ripped the house apart and put everything new in less than two years before.
What a waste.
The expert noted that we've done all the BIG things; removing walls, new kitchen, new bathroom - the stuff that costs a lot of money to get done nowadays, the stuff that needs professionals. Everything else on the to-do list is cosmetic.
Our main takeaway from the visit is that we could probably put the house on the market now with a reasonable expectation of selling it quite quickly at close to the listed price. The market is great in our area.
We've got an appointment with our mortgage broker next week to find out what the next steps should be.
I realised through all this that we have enough equity now in our house to buy a smaller house - admittedly in a worse area - for cash. We could be mortgage-free... but we wouldn't have enough space.
Instead we will use this lump of cash in order to move up to a larger house with the features we have always wanted such as an en-suite, utility room and a well laid-out garden. Very exciting.
We bought this house about 4 and a half years ago and put down a 15% deposit. Our mortgage payments have only paid off around 10% of what we originally borrowed in November 2020 but we sit here, today, with a loan-to-value ratio of around 53% because the market has risen a lot whilst what we owe has reduced a little.
Next step is to borrow some extra money and trade-up. Hopefully this will be our last Christmas in this house.
The portfolio
The LM portolio value is up, again, to another all-time high. Last week it nudged into a 5 figure profit for the first time ever.
I'll never get over the disappointment of having to make several withdrawals from my LISA last year but it hasn't caused too much of an issue. The portfolio value sits at about 14% below where is was in late May 2024 and that was its highest ever value. I'm confident I'll be able to pay some money in this year and in the not-too-distant future it'll be back up at those values.
Obviously I'm doing something right with my share-picking and money management and I will continue on the same path with the expectation that the portfolio will grow and grow.
It's easy to be optimistic when everything's working out well. Look at the table above and you can see I've got 3 highly successful trades and the others aren't doing too bad.
Should the FTSE 100 continue to rise it will likely pass its all-time high of 8,871.31 that was achieved in March. The stock market is going up and it's wonderful to see.
Maybe that £1 million portfolio value isn't completely out of the question.