When to take the house off the market

greenbee

My house has sold very quickly (in fact, so quickly I haven't got a clue about where and what I want to buy :cool:) for the full asking price.
The offer was made yesterday, and I see no reason not to accept it (I'm just below a stamp duty threshold so can't see anyone offering higher), but want to know at what point I should actually take the house off the market and stop viewings (there are a few more booked for today... including the buyer who is coming for a second viewing).
We all know that there are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong between offer and completion, so at what point would you get the agent to take down the board and stop advertising?

Dan-Dan

is the offer from someone proceedable , ready to go ? , or a tyrekicker trying to get you to rebuff other interest , as it sounds like your thinking aloing the right lines regards price to expect

If it was me , and they were proceedable i would probably get looking , and quick! , they would expect your EA to mark as `under offer` of SSTC` if they are serious , in any case

greenbee

They are proceedable... I hadn't even got round to telling my solicitor I'd put the house on the market or thinking seriously about what to buy (given that agents can be SO unpleasant unless you are already on the market, and have had offers). So i'm not in a hurry anyway...

Dan-Dan

greenbee wrote: »

They are proceedable... I hadn't even got round to telling my solicitor I'd put the house on the market or thinking seriously about what to buy (given that agents can be SO unpleasant unless you are already on the market, and have had offers). So i'm not in a hurry anyway...

No offence but i hope we never end up going for a house owned by someone as unprepared and casual as you appear to be

Dragonista

Did the offer not come with conditions? For example: "I'll offer £XXX if you take the house off the market"

hazyjo

Would definitely stop viewings and show 'under offer' as soon as I accepted an offer. Some EAs will say they'll do all that once they know the buyer is committed (such as them getting the survey done). Personally, I don't like doing that and think there has to be an element of trust from the start. Obviously if you've heard nothing after a couple of weeks, that's different!

Jx
PS to be pedantic, your house hasn't 'sold' yet

DRP

Once the offer was accepted I would not accept further viewings, but wouldn't actually list the property as 'SSTC' until there was some show of commitment from the buyers (ie. survey booked, solicitor's details passed on).

If none of this was forthcoming within a week or so I would start accepting viewers again.

PasturesNew

Most agents won't want to do viewings on houses that are proceeding.... they'd just be wasting their time. Viewings will dry up and anybody phoning the EA's office asking about your house will be told it's under offer and they'll try to flog them a different one.

Malks

When we sold, the agent wouldn’t put it under offer, by left it ‘for sale’ and took details of anyone who called in about it and explained the situation. No more viewings were allowed. Apparently this was done as it was best to keep marketing the property, incase the buyer pulled out. Personally had it been me buying through the agent I would have been unhappy with this approach, but my buyers seemed more than happy with it.

When we offered, it was subject to no more viewings and the house being shown as SSTC.

mrsmchapman

When we accepted the offer from our buyer about a week later it went online as sstc, any furthers viewers were made aware of the position, left details should things not pan out. No further viewings went ahead.

greenbee

I haven't had all the details of the offer - just a quick phone call from the agent telling me about it and asking whether I wanted to go ahead with viewings that are already booked.

And I'm well aware that it hasn't sold yet, hence my query over when to actually take the house off the market - there are plenty of problems that could still come up.

Given that the buyers are coming round for a second viewing, it seems unwise to stop the other viewings, just in case they change their minds.

As for being unprepared... well it took all of 5 minutes to instruct the solicitor this morning, so that's hardly a major issue. And I now know what my budget is so can look seriously - I know plenty of people who have looked before they sold and then had to rethink when they've spent what the agent told them they'd get and had to accept a considerably lower price, which has caused considerable delays.

Given that it was only 4 working days from the property being advertised to the offer coming in (the brochures haven't even been printed...) I don't think it is to be expected that I'd already have found somewhere. The vendors themselves have sold already prior to looking and are moving into rented accommodation on Monday.

Guess I'd better get looking seriously now I know what my budget is...