1st Timer seller - your advice please...

Gizzygirl

Hi Everyone,

We have our house on the market now for three weeks (lots of interest but no firm offer as of yet) When is the best time to start looking for your next house? Some estate agents we have spoken to have told us not to bother looking until we have a firm offer on our place, and other people are telling us to start looking now. What did you all do? I would just hate to find somewhere and loose it becuase of not selling ours in time. Do people accept offers on places where you have not sold your house?

For that matter is 3 weeks a long time in waiting to sell?

Sorry to ask so many questions but we have never done this before, so any advice will be appreciated.:o

prutter

We started looking the weekend before we had our flat on the market.
There's no harm in looking - but as you say, if you find the place of your dreams you could risk losing it if you don't get a buyer in time.

We found the house we wanted before we had a buyer. Expressed a keen interest, but were told they'd only accept offers from buyers who were proceedable (ie. who had a buyer).
We were in a race with 2 other couples who were also wanted it, but who also didn't have buyers.

Luckily, we were the first to get a buyer (2 weeks ago today) - and had an offer accepted on the house the same day.
All is progressing nicely so far......

I imagine most people wouldn't accept an offer unless you had a buyer - or if they did, I imagine they'd want to leave it on the market until you did....

Hope this helps....

cattie

If you haven't even had an offer on your property yet then you are not in a position to offer on a property should you see one you like.

The normal course of events would be to get an acceptable offer on your property first before arranging to view properties you may be interested in. I shall be putting my house up for sale very soon & will be telling the estate agent not to send viewers who haven't yet sold their property.

When I've sold in the past I've had viewers who had yet to sell but refused their offers & was always lucky enough to sell to someone with no property to sell.

benood

Get out there - get yourself on agents lists trawl through the local property pages as much as possible, look at places from the outside and generally get a good feel for the local market - only then will you know you're paying the right price when you're ready to move and have an offer under your belt - I wouldn't be averse to looking at a few places internally either - you can be up front with the agent too as long as you don't take the mickey.