Hidden houses for sale?

bbford

We are in rented accommodation, as we sold last Nov. and thought renting would make us attractive buyers.

However, the market is sooo slow, viewed 1 property in last 4 months and very little coming up.

Are we missing properties by just using the conventional website searches?

Is it worth paying for an agency to search??

Our budget is around £600,000.

thanks!!

KareenaMukherjee

Tell me about it.

All this nonsense about it being a 'buyers market' is codswallop. Mortgages are low, people are hanging onto their properties, not selling them cheap, and just content. You'll always get sellers at any time desperate to sell for whatever reason. But on a whole the market is dead.

The availability is sheer rubbish out there.

angel1976

Leafleting the area you want? Someone on this site did that very successfully recently.

kiddy_guy

bbford wrote: »

We are in rented accommodation, as we sold last Nov. and thought renting would make us attractive buyers.

However, the market is sooo slow, viewed 1 property in last 4 months and very little coming up.

Are we missing properties by just using the conventional website searches?

Is it worth paying for an agency to search??

Our budget is around £600,000.

thanks!!

Which websites you checking so far?

Ulfar

Driving or walking around the area you are interested in can give big results. A lot of repossession houses aren't advertised actively by estate agents until they are just about to go to auction.

I missed out on a repossession when I was looking that had apparently been on the market 6 months, I was registered with the estate agent but they didn't tell me about it until it was due for auction. The only marketing they had done prior to this was to put a sale board outside.

KareenaMukherjee

He's looking at £600,000 plus houses .. the top end.

Eton_Rifle

Yes, absolutely you're missing properties by waiting until they are published on websites. Probably not many in this slow market but there's still a chance especially if you have specific popular requirements or are looking in a desirable sought-after area.

Agencies have lists of buyers interested in particular types of properties and they ring those customers first when they get a new instruction so if any of those people are interested, they get first pick and the first viewing.

If it happens to suit those customers and they make an offer which is accepted, it will never even get to to the website and you wouldn't even have known it was for sale.

cocobryce3

try rightmove.co.uk as this sight tends to have most agents and houses within a certain area that you specify,it might help you never know!

diable

KareenaMukherjee wrote: »

He's looking at £600,000 plus houses .. the top end.

Budget of £600k to me means the maximum and were I am am from thats an lower then average price.

Eton_Rifle

Just to add - there are also the odd few houses which the owner has asked not to be advertised, no board, no website presence.

They want to keep it all under the radar and not tell the whole street or village their business for whatever reason. They just want to know if someone would be interested without all the flags, whistles and curtain twitchers or perhaps the house is empty and they don't want to attract the wrong sort of attention.

I've viewed two properties like this but didn't made offers so don't know how committed the sellers actually were.

westv

Ulfar wrote: »

A lot of repossession houses aren't advertised actively by estate agents until they are just about to go to auction.

Never understood the reasoning behind that. Shouldn't the agent be trying to get the best price? I guess they aren't bothered if it's only someone losing their home and not paying them a nice fee.