Building up a rapport with purchasers of your home

Burnley_Lad

We accepted an offer on our home last week.

I was the one who showed the couple round, as my wife was at work.

Now they are the potential purchasers of our home, I would like to build up a friendship/rapport with them to assure them that we will do anything asked of us quickly, our solicitor is a good friend of ours, and basically they've nothing to worry about. I'm also aware that my wife hasn't met them yet.

My wife isn't keen on this idea, and she says that just as long as they buy the house she's not bothered if she meets them or not. I disagree.

I know we're still in the early stages, and we'll probably have more interaction with the couple as we get closer to a completion date, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on building up a rapport with the potential purchasers of your home.

Taking this one step further, would it be wise to ask our estate agents to let the couple have our phone number, so they can contact us direct should they need to, or keep things 'official' by only going through estate agents and solicitors?

silvercar

We have a rapour with our buyers and sellers. With hitches along the way we felt we could trust what each was saying more than the messages going via the estate agents who have put their own spin on things. (Apologies to EAs)

In fact my buyer has been talking to the person 3 up from the chain from him!

Anything that keeps people happy and the chain together is worth it IMO.

Burnley_Lad

thanks for your quick reply. I forgot to mention that we're not in a chain - they are first time buyers, and we're going to rent for a bit, so hopefully it'll put us in a better bargaining position when we come to buy again in about 3-4 months time, as we've no house to sell.

worriedfirsttimebuyer

We are FTBs and the person selling us our house is really lovely and friendly. We met him twice during viewings but i don't think we'll see him again at all. Everything has been done through solicitors and estate agents. Due to exchange today, but will prob be tomorrow now.

Pupster

A few years ago we were nice and friendly with the lady that we had put an offer in to buy her house.....BUT....the survey showed damp and some other problems and we decided not to go ahead with the purchase.......she turned into a raving loony and left abusive messages on our ansaphone. Always dealt strictly with the EA after that :rolleyes:

bookgirl_2

The couple we bought from were nice, and we swapped tel numbers at the viewing after offer accepted.

This was handy when we wanted to keep things moving, plus when we needed a measurement to see if a bit of furniture would fit etc.

However, we made sure that anything 'official' went through our solicitor, e.g. request for building regs, lease details etc

No harm in offering your number or email address.

[Deleted User]

we built a rapport when we were selling. There were problems re the time taking for the buyer to get probate but she let us know every step as it happened and so we were patient and not too worried. Go ahead and build the bridge. It can do no harm and can help to alleviate any potential stress

david29dpo

i agree. our agent never calls me, even to give feed back from viewers, i will now ask for the phone numbers and ask them myself!

marksimonpowell

be sociable, but dont exchange numbers etc. its a nightmare - your solicitor and agent are there to do the talking.

david29dpo

talking seems to be to difficult for the agent! i think the combined IQ of all the staff dont get in to double figures.

starkiller

I agree about talking to agents!!!! Just rang the EA that we placed an offer with a week ago to find out what is happening, was told last week they wanted it to be marketed for a week. Its a week today, rung them, got a quite rude reply of "YOU were told to wait, a week, and we would contact you!!!"

Pardon me for wanting a buy a house you are selling! I thought that was what they were paid to do! :mad: