Sadly, this family residence sinks in (4,4)

'sinks in' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I cannot tell whether this works.

'sadly this family residence' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
an anagram of 'this' is 'hits' which is located in the answer.
'residence' could be 'home' (home is a kind of residence) and 'home' is found within the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?