Which is higher priority? Property or pension?

[GeneralZod]

Would this not have been the time to shift money into your pension? I presume that your pension was well enough diversified not to all be tech stocks! So if stocks were going cheap, sure this was the time to get in? ... I'd say your pension has just about recovered by now, however if you were paying in your avc's you would be been ahead sooner!

I'm not going to argue with your point because intellectually I agree with you. I'll just explain the classic mistake of why I didn't do that.

The year before buying the home I changed jobs to a company with a DC pension with a compulsory employee and relatively generous employer contribution. In total 15% of gross basic salary. So I had a feeling that the pension is covered and I don't need to worry about something that is decades away anyway.

The pension funds continued to perform badly for a few years so I concentrated on repaying the mortgage. By the time I realised the stock market was on the way up again I felt I'd probably missed most of the growth before the next fall. At that stage I'd made great strides in clearing the mortgage and eliminating it completely became an emotional target.
About 5 months before finally clearing the mortgage I did increase my AVCs from 0% to 10% when I saw the market continuing to do well so you could say I finally coped on to my mistake.