Approaching home owners directly offering to buy - has anyone done this successfully

steve1980

busybird wrote: »

It has been on the market now for a year and I am seriously contemplating using a direct sale method as estate agents just don't seem to be generating much interest, but I can't find much about how successful this method would be.

If your home has been on the market for a year then 9 times out of 10 it's on the market at the wrong price. Why not start a new thread or PM the details that are on Rightmove. I used to do all the Rightmove listing for the company I worked for and even it was a wreck you'd think it was a palace!

missrlr

I have done this but I sent a letter through the post to each address in the roads I was interested in (this was not a huge amount of houses and it was an area change to quicker for me to do it that way). I did this as I thought one of the houses was empty and so the post may be being forwarded on.

Turned out that a couple had split and were having to move so contacted me - still own the house now. I explained my situation and said that I would be happy to provide the contact info of a local solicitor who would be handling my purchase if they wanted to verify any details to provide some assurance.

Nothing ventured nothing gained - but keep looking through other channels too!

botchjob

We bought our current house through a letter drop. We had spent weeks and weeks doing lots of legwork and homework and had narrowed our search down to about a dozen streets and, within that, just over 100 specific houses.

We wrote a polite + unhassly letter briefly explaining what we were looking for and which basically said if they were considering selling within the next 6 months or so, to get in touch. We also set up a separate email address to reply to.

From the 100 letters we had 4 replies (over the course of about 3 months) all of which were strong contenders. We ended up buying one, and are thrilled with it.

The downside of buying a house this way is that it immediately put you in a weaker bargaining position, as the seller knows you want it and has the option of going through an agent if the price doesn't match their expectations. But we agreed a fair price and, I think, if it had gone on the open market we would have had some serious competition from other buyers. It's a great house, in a great street, which is why we did the letter drop in the first place.

JimmyTheWig

SpongeBobHexagonPants wrote: »

I guess the worst that can happen is that it ends up in the bin.

If you're happy to approach it with this attitude (i.e. it won't be a disaster in terms of time and money if it doesn't come to anything) then no reason not to.

SpongeBobHexagonPants

There are some encouraging posts on here and great to hear so many positive outcomes.

I thought the consensus would be probably not to do it, but having read your replies I think we'll give it a go. We'll clearly need to strike the right note with the wording though.

DominicJ_2

Someone did it to me to try and rent my house, their mum/sister/something lived in the area, so they went on right move to find previously sold houses (housing association estate) and leafletted them all.
Didnt consider it rude, just rang them up and said sorry not looking to rent it.

I also had a letter from an agent, but I assumed that was a scam.

Not sure I would have the courage to do it, but I wouldnt consider it rude if anyone sent me a letter or even knocked on the door, although that could be a little bit intimidating.

steve1980

DominicJ wrote: »

I also had a letter from an agent, but I assumed that was a scam.

What a bizarre comment!

PlutoinCapricorn

I get letters from several different estate agents regularly, saying that they have people interested in buying property in my area. I am not thinking of selling, but it is encouraging to see that there is still a demand.

SailorSam

Pluto i think i'd take more notice of a private letter than one from an Estate Agent to know if there was a demand. One from an individual would mean they wanted to live in my area but an EA may do a big mail drop just to fill up his window and stop anyone who was thinking of selling from going to a rival EA.

Norma_Desmond

Someone actually 'leaflet dropped' us just a few months after we'd bought this house; it was a polite, well worded letter and we certainly didn't take offence or think it was cheeky.