What is the best procedure for moving home?

fcmisc

I am thinking of selling my home, and buying another somewhere else.

What is the correct procedure for doing this?

1) Do I need to put my place on the market, wait for an offer, accept the offer and then go hunting?

2) Find a property I like. Put an offer in, but say that the offer is subject to me selling my home?

With case 1, I am at risk of being homeless if I don't find a property soon.

With case 2, the seller might not take me seriously.

PasturesNew

[1]
Until you've got a buyer - and you know at what price, etc, you don't have the funds to go shopping for a new house and you can't put in offers based on you selling as that's not a proper offer, so you'd be ignored.

With [1] you can always rent while looking if you get caught out, or rent a holiday caravan, or stay in a hotel.

calicocat

Start looking in the area you want to move to now as it could take months to find something/area you like. If it was me, once i'd homed in on a specific area to move to and knew prices and how often they come on the market etc i'd put mine up.

hazyjo

I think a bit of both - by all means look, but only if you're someone who's not going to go OMG I JUST HAVE TO HAVE THAT HOUSE AND WILL TAKE OUT A BRIDGING LOAN, SELL A KIDNEY OR ME GRANNY TO GET IT.

I mostly found that when a buyer was interested in buying my house, one of their first questions was whether or not I'd found anywhere to buy yet. If you say you've not even started looking yet, you might find it puts them off.

You must be ready to accept that you will probably see many houses you like come and go. I did. But it gave me a great knowledge of where I was buying, what had come back onto the market 4 or 5 times, what houses in what roads sold fast, and where to avoid.

Jx

Yorkie1

How long do houses in your area take to sell, OP?

If you're in a slow-moving area then any attempt to offer before yours has sold, is quite likely to backfire on you because you'll end up spending money on buying the new property e.g. surveys - only to have the chain fall apart later when it becomes clear that you are not in a position to proceed because your house has still not received an acceptable offer.

There is a long thread somewhere else on this board about whether it's timewasting / unfair on the seller to go to view houses when you're not in a position to consider making an offer. There was very much split opinion!

But definitely do your research in advance - keep an eye on what comes free, how long it stays on the market, how much it sells for (as opposed to asking price), drive round areas to get a feel for them at all times of day and night. This means that when you are ready to start looking seriously and put in an offer, you're fully informed.

Paully232000

We did a bit of both choices 1 and 2. We looked through rightmove etc before our property was on the market and found an area we wanted to move to and a list of properties as long as your arm in that area or near to. Then we went round the local area to have a look at different times of day, looked for local parks, schools, shops etc to see if the area was ok.

This was while we were putting our property on the market, speaking to EAs about selling prices and fees etc.
Put it on the market and kept on looking at properties, saving them to rightmove, but not actually arranging viewings, but we had an idea of if and when our property sold which ones (if still available) we would view. We also spoke to a broker, and solicitor and arranged their services.

Luckily our property sold within 2 weeks and then we made arrangements to view some of our faves and then made a choice and offer.

pinkteapot

One agent talked to us about 'low key marketing'. They do the photos, property details, etc, but don't make it live on Rightmove or put it in the local papers until you've seen something you want to buy. If they get any buyers phone or go in who are looking for something that matches your house, they will show them the details and ask you if you want viewings yet (as well as telling the buyer you haven't found anywhere to go yet). Then, as soon as you find something, they're ready to hit the button and get it on the market. Speeds things up by a week or two (depending on whether you've already had agents round to value).

I'd say it depends on what you've got to sell and how fast it will sell, which only you can say by looking at the local area. We're in an area where things are selling fast, and we're stuck under the £250k stamp duty threshold so our four-bed only ends up being £10-20k more than three-bed. All of which means that we should find a buyer quickly.

For our purchase, we're looking for a long-term house and I'm really fussy. It could take months or years. Some agents told us to line up a buyer and make them wait. They said that if the buyer eventually gets fed up they'll just line us up another buyer. However, I don't really want to do this as I'll feel under pressure to get out and rent if we have a buyer waiting in the wings. If we were in a house that would be hard to sell I'd be marketing now though.

I'm honest with agents when I view houses - they know exactly what our position is. But when I tell them where we live and that I won't be trying to exceed the £250k mark when we sell they're more than happy to take us on viewings.

We haven't signed with an agent yet but are thinking about going on with the low key approach I mentioned at the start. As I said, it'll just speed things up slightly when we do find The One.