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Found the perfect house - not even got ours on the market yet!

This is the first house in over 2 years me and the missus have both agreed we'd love to sell up for.

I'm not sure if most people decide to move by putting there house on the market first and then look around, or look around first to find *the* house which makes you want to put yours on the market?!


If I understand correctly I cannot put an offer in on new house until i'm in a position to do so - ie. someone has put an offer in on my house :confused:

By the time i've had my house valued, put up on the market, had viewings, and sold it, there is a very high chance the house I desire will have been sold to someone else.

Where would I stand if someone were to put an offer in on my property to then find out the house we want has gone? Is it then a case of our buyer would then have to wait until we found our next "perfect" house - or would we be under pressure to find somewhere were not totally happy with to get the chain moving?
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  • catmiaow
    catmiaow Posts: 5,954 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I was in the exact same position as you!

    We found the perfect house, and didnt have our house on the market, so we have put it up with House network and with no viewings after a month, we have also put it up with a local agent.

    I have put an offer in for the house we want and it's accepted, but as we are not in a position to go ahead, the house remains up for sale so someone could take it away from us! Very stressful for us as I am sure you know.

    The way we have done it is that if we sell our house before we can move into the house we find, we would move out to let the buyers in and stay with family until the house was ready, Not sure if you are in a position to do that, but you don't want to put buyers off.
    No you're not a vegetarian if you eat any animal or fish, so do not insult genuine veggies by calling yourself one! :mad:

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  • Agents may try to discourage offers from 'non-proceedable' buyers, but how about viewing and making it clear to the vendors that you are very keen but just waiting for your chain to develop...if the EA comes to them with a poor or only average proceedable offer, they might at least check with you if your position has changed...?

    If the vendor decides to sell to someone else, then yes, you will need to seek a alternative way to create the chain. Although, if you have a decent offer for your place, you might consider renting for a few months, to avoid losing that buyer, and then with the money in the bank you may find you are considered a better proceedable prospect next time around...
    Act in haste, repent at leisure.

    dunstonh wrote:
    Its a serious financial transaction and one of the biggest things you will ever buy. So, stop treating it like buying an ipod.
  • This is exactly what happened to us....... We move on Thursday.

    We saw our "dream" house and had various estate agents valuing our own house the same day, including the estate agent who had the "dream" house up for sale. By the end of the day we had put our house into his hands, and submitted an offer subject to contract for the property, (The "dream" house stayed on the market untill ours sold) but at least we would know instantly if someone else put in a higher offer AND it discoraged the sellers from accepting a lower offer!.

    Because we were buying and selling with the same estate agent, I felt that he put an "extra" effort into selling our property, Two guarenteed commisions with not much work. Our house was sold within 5 days of the for sale board going up...... and the rest you might say is "history" .... or even the future!!
  • pault123
    pault123 Posts: 1,111 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Combo Breaker
    Cheers for advice so far everyone :)

    Sprocker that sounds like quite a good idea, I thought initially it might be a bad thing going with same EA as they could advice the vendor on good AND the bad aspects how my house sale was going, eg. "no interest will be on the market for ages i'd go with the other buyer etc"

    But from what you've said it seems it could be a good thing.

    It seems truly the best position to be in to *catch* your dream home is a first time buyer or sell up and become a renter LOL
  • michaels
    michaels Posts: 28,779 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Only thing I would caution with going with the same agent is their incentive will be for agent to make your sale to take place at a price that allows you to make the move rather than getting you the best price - we were in a similar situation and the agent acting on the house we were looking to purchase suggested it would help our offer if we were selling through them but suggested we should ask and expect to get 20-30k (approx 10%) than we actually achieved within a week going with a different agent - allowing us to put in an acceptable offer on the house we wanted and still pocket quite a bit of difference...
    I think....
  • This happened to us too - found our 'forever' house even though we weren't on the market, and were in the middle of decorating the old house, so not at its best for selling!

    We got a number of agents to value our house, but eventually went with the agent who was selling the 'forever' house for lots of reasons. It gave them an incentive to market our house, as the sale of ours would lead to two commissions for them, it gave them knowledge of the potential 'strength' of our chain, which worked in our favour when they were advising the vendor of the 'forever' house and, they were a smaller, family run agent, so everyone in the office knew us, and knew what we were trying to achieve.

    Yes, we could probably have got an extra £5k for our house, but frankly, I was willing to take that risk to get the forever house. 4 years later, it was the best decision we ever made. Interestingly, we were in competition with someone else, who was selling through a different agent, but the vendors chose to go with our offer (and stick with it when the others tried to gazump us to the tune of £5k), partly because the agent was able to advise them about the position we were in and the strength of chain etc. They were also very honest vendors, who, having accepted an offer, stuck to their word, which was refreshing!

    Only you can decide, and ultimately, you need to go with the agent who gives you the most confidence and who you would be happy to buy through, but in our case, the same agent worked for us.
  • The estate agent that we used was truly fantastic..... we even got near to the asking price. Suprisingly enough all the 3 estate agents came in at roughly the same valuation price (on our house)

    We had one offer that was very low and the estate agent said "Legally i have to come to you with all offers, But this is totally unrealistic, and if I were you I would wait for a better one"

    All through the buying and selling process I really felt that he had our interests at heart. Or perhaps we were just lucky that he was a top notch estate agent?
  • PasturesNew
    PasturesNew Posts: 70,698 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    I had an offer from somebody who had put their house on the market 2 days before. I turned them down because their house wasn't sold.

    I then found a proceedable buyer, who then pulled out ... at precisely the same time my original people reappeared as their house had sold - this was about 5 months down the line. Ended up selling to them, 7 months after they first saw it.

    Until you have sold you house you are not proceedable. Make all the noises you like, but if you can't come up with the money then you can't buy it. It's better to say nothing and hope it's still for sale when you are proceedable ... doing it that way the sellers won't have your offer potentially on the table.

    Imagine if you are the only offer now... but you have to wait. They might keep their price at what it is because they "know it's worth that" because you made the offer. If, instead, you say nothing, then come forward in 3 months' time with an offer, with them having had nobody ... you're in a stronger bargaining position.
  • skintchick
    skintchick Posts: 15,114 Forumite
    Debt-free and Proud!
    This just happened to us, and as the agent wouldn;t accept offers from us unless we were on the market ( this is common with all EAs here) we put ours on - only for our dream house to nbe sold to someone else!

    so we are now committed to going on the market and desperately house hunting in a very slow market (we only want to live in this town and there is very little on the market at the moment).

    Moral? Don;t look if you aren;t ready to buy!
    :cool: DFW Nerd Club member 023...DFD 9.2.2007 :cool:
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  • it seems to be a common predicament! we saw our ideal house, and asked to view but were honest and told them we werent on the market. loved it and got agents round straight away. we have gone with the same agents as the sellers, and are pleased with their work so far. they will get 2 commissions for little work and valued our place honestly compared to the others.

    we havent put in an offer, as that will be dependent on what we get for ours. but the vendors know we are very interested, so much so that they've begun looking and have found where they want to move to. SO if we could just sell, that would be peachy!
    Relax, Breathe, Love 2014 Challenges:Cross Stitch Cafe Challenger 23. Frugal Living Challenger. No buying cleaning products. I used MSE advice to reduce my car insurance from 550 to 325!! & paid it off in full!!!
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