Help on when its okay to put in an offer??

Charlie-girl_3

Hi All,

I'm new here so hopefully I'm getting all this right so far!!!

I need some help from seasoned house buyers out there, I am a FTB but my partener owns a property (we are currently living in this property). We have decided to sell and move to a bigger place together as we would like to start a family. We have had the property valued and are now getting the HIP into place ready to go on the market, I hope this will be before Easter. In the area we wish to move to we have viewed all property's in our price range we would consider, only one so far has been anywhere close to what we are looking for. Several estate agents have suggested that we put in an offer subject to selling....this sounds a little risky to me so I'd love to hear people's advice on the situation. All the agents we have had round to view think we will sell within 4 weeks of going on the market (not sure how honest they are being?!) so I hope we can proceed soon.

If the house we do like sells, there will litterally be nothing we would consider buying and I would hate to have to move into rented whilst we keep looking!!!

So pls, the best advice you can give me guys and girls, any help muchly appreciated!!!

Charlie-Girl

Sammy85_2

You could put an offer in, but the fact havent yet put your house on the market will most likely mean that the owner wont accept your offer.

We had offers on our last house, but the people who offered hadnt had any offers on theirs, so we saw no point in accepting an offer that they couldnt proceed on.

Fire_Fox

Welcome to MSE!

To be honest you shouldn't really be viewing when you own house is not even on the market as many vendors will not take you seriously, you are unlikely to be able to get as lower offer accepted until your are in a proceedable position. You will only sell within four weeks if your house is priced realistically, some estate agents will flatter you with a valuation to get your business. Have you looked at land registry sold prices for your street and area? www.houseprices.co.uk

phildo_2

Agree with Firefox above. Whilst ours was for sale (August-Nov last year)we kept an eye on rightmove, introduced ourselves to agents and did some driveby viewings which eliminated a fair few that looked ok but there was no point going doing viewings until we were in a position to proceed. I just made sure that i always had a shortlist of 5-6 houses that I would want to view so that as soon as I had an offer, i could move quickly.
The weekend after we accepted an offer on ours (late Nov.), we viewed 5 and did another 4 the following weekend. We offered on one about a week later and moved in a few weeks ago.

Charlie-girl_3

Thanks for the advice guys, to be honest we found the idea of putting in an offer at such an early stage crazy, but estate agents will tell you anything I guess!!!

The reason we have already viewed some properties it because there is such a shortage in the area we are looking in, we didn't want to even put our property on the market if there was nothing out there to buy! And I must say after 10 viewings, 9 of them were definate No's!!!

Our EA has told us he will start in the HIPs ASAP, but may bring people to view before this is complete, they won't actually be marketing the property, again worried about this!!! Can I trust anything my EA tells me??!!