Selling without agent and HIPs

Battenburg

We have had our house valued by 3 agents - 2 suggested exactly the same selling price and one was about 12% lower. We were ready to put it on the market with one of these agents.

By coincidence, my wife met a neighbour in town. He recognised her and got chatting. He was saying how he would like to marry and move out of the extended family home (he lives there with three generations) and get his own place nearby - he really wished a property would come on the market, ideally on our road.

She told him that we had been having ours valued and he asked her to promise to tell him before we put it on the market (he knows there would be other people on the road in the same situation and wouldn't want to get into a bidding war!). There are a number of families living in the same situation on our street. A little later he came out of his house opposite, chivvied on by his dad in the background, to say he was serious about it, and that his dad had the cash to buy the house for him (it is not uncommon for things work this way in his ethnic community in this area).

Apart from this seeming like ridiculously good luck (potentially), it raises some questions:

If you sell without an agent, where do you start? Just go to a solicitor?

And my main question: Do you need to prepare a HIP in these circumstances?

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks

pie81

You don't need the HIP to sell to him as you would not be marketing the property in any way. As you say, you would just go to a solicitor to start the process off (having first agreed the price).

But one question: if you think there would be other people on the street who would bid on the house, why not generally spread the word that you are thinking of selling and see if you can generate some more interest? You would still avoid agent fees (though a HIP might be required in this situation as you would be sort of marketing) and you could get a better price if there is competition... a bidding war is bad for your neighbour but not for you.

thriftyamy

you definitely wouldn't need a HIP:

"
You don’t need a HIP for:

• properties where there is no marketing, for example if you are selling to a member of your family
• non-residential properties
• properties limited by law to use as holiday accommodation or occupation for less than 11 months per year
• mixed sales, for example a shop with flat
• sales of portfolios of properties, for example selling two properties together
• properties not being sold with completely vacant possession, for example with a sitting tenant
• unsafe properties and properties due to be demolished
• properties sold through the ‘Right to Buy’, ‘Right to Acquire’ and ‘Social HomeBuy’ home ownership schemes

See ‘Low cost homeownership schemes – an introduction’ for more information about the Right to Buy, Right to Acquire and Social HomeBuy schemes."

from the direct.gov site^

but I doubt there'd be other people, it sounds like a miracle / too good to be true, I think you should bite their hand off/not look a gift horse in the mouth etc

you're very very lucky if this works out!

PasturesNew

Hip or Not: At the moment, with one guy, there's been no marketing. To approach others in the road might be seen as marketing, depending how you did it. If you stick a note through every door, that's marketing isn't it.

thriftyamy

PasturesNew wrote: »

Hip or Not: At the moment, with one guy, there's been no marketing. To approach others in the road might be seen as marketing, depending how you did it. If you stick a note through every door, that's marketing isn't it.

good point!

Milliewilly

Difficult one this - if you have someone with the cash knocking at your door do you gamble on marketing the house yourself on the quiet to try to drum up a better price (and maybe not to a cash buyer) and risk losing the cash buyer or just go with their offer and save several £K's on Estate Agents fees.

If the offer is acceptable I would go with the cash buyer. If it falls through you can market in the normal way and you have only lost a bit of time. Nothings really going to happen now until the new year anyway.

carlsberggal

You need a HIP unless you are selling to a close family member as far as I'm aware

Richard_Webster

You don't need the HIP to sell to him as you would not be marketing the property in any way. As you say, you would just go to a solicitor to start the process off (having first agreed the price).

Right.

You need a HIP unless you are selling to a close family member as far as I'm aware

Wrong.