Being a first time seller...

linda.b_4

You could try an offer but the seller probably wont take the house off the market. We had an offer on ours from a lady who had to sell. we accepted on condition of her sale but didn't take it off the market. that was Nov. Since then we've had 3 offers 1 which we accepted as they were in a position to move. Her house is still on the market so I'm glad we didn't take ours off or we would still be waiting! Also we had seen the house we are buying but didn't put in an offer till we had a buyer as they would have probably done the same as we did and kept marketing the house. So by putting in an offer it more than likely won't actually acheive much.

Woby_Tide

I still disagree about not offering. We knew the house would stay on the market as we could not proceed, but we alos knew someone else had offered who wasn't in a position to move. The EA advised our offer was acceptable but our position wasn't, the moment we sold we were able to then proceed and get the other property withdrawn from sale. We didn't have to go through the too-ing and fro-ing of making offers to find an acceptable price nor potentially being up against anyone who had seen the property since we had made our offer. I still think making an offer does no harm except it allows you to proceed as soon as you have an offer without going through the offer process from scratch.

jesster_2

I think the thing to remember is every seller is different. It can't hurt to make an offer. My parents made an offer on a house before they'd even put theirs on the market, but the vendor accepted.

On the other hand you can't expect the vendor to take the house off the market. This impacts in two ways:

1) You may lose the house to someone else, but hey, that could happen if you don't offer too.

2) You are not in so strong a position to barter over the price. If your house was sold or under offer then you could justifiably make a lower offer by arguing that you're in a strong position to move quickly and highly unlikely to pull out. This will swing it for many vendors who are more bothered about an easy transaction than an extra 5 or 10 grand.

linda.b_4

If you make an offer that's way below the asking price, why would they consider it when someone in a better position might come along and be able to move quicker. We really wanted the house we are buying, but waited till we had an offer on ours before making the offer. although they had had better offers than ours (asking price £159.950, offer £151.00) they accepted ours cos we were the only ones in a position to actually buy it!