I want to buy a property that isn't for sale

LouiseAnne90_xo · 19 April 2014 at 9:26PM

Last month we found a property we wanted but it sold to somebody else cause we hadn't sold our own property

Now we have sold ours but there is nothing on the market and we want to live in a specific village.

We want to put a letter through the doors of the houses we like the look of but are not sure what to write.
Has anyone used this method and can provide some assistance ?

Do we put the letter through the door showing our interest, asking them to get some valuations and then us contact us for a viewing if they want to sell ? :think:

Thanks in advance :grinheart

KMMT · 19 April 2014 at 9:31PM

Hi, we just sold our house in this way. We had some estate agents around giving us valuations & prior to us deciding who to go with a person put a note through the door saying that they were interested in our property & left an email address. Fast forward 6 weeks & we have sold to them & are just waiting to complete on our house purchase! If you don't ask you don't get, & we really liked the fact they approached us. We also really liked the thousands of ££££'a we saved in estate agents fees!!

LouiseAnne90_xo · 19 April 2014 at 10:00PM

Brilliant, did they say anything in particular that made you feel comfortable going ahead with it ?
Anything I should make note of ?

Thanks

Shoey1610 · 19 April 2014 at 10:11PM

We exchange next week on a house we bought through leaflet dropping. We really wanted to live in a specific road and still can't believe we have got to this stage.

It has been really nice dealing directly with the sellers actually, it has been a good experience. I handwrote letters detailing our situation and giving contact details, it was a lot of effort but my hope was it would show through to any potential vendors. I felt a bit silly walking round posting them, but it paid off.

KMMT · 19 April 2014 at 10:20PM

We were lucky because we hadn't signed with an estate agents but were already thinking of selling. I think we just needed that push! The letter just said that they hoped we didn't mind them approaching us & writing a letter, & that they were interested in buying a property where I live. They explained that they were in the process of selling there house & if we were interested in selling privately then here were her there details. (They left an email address). It's not for everyone as you have to do the sale negotiating without an estate agent, but we knew what we wanted & needed to sell the house for, & knew what some of the other houses like ours had sold for so we went with that. There wasn't much backwards & forwards. We will never know how much more we could have got if it would of been on the open market, but to be honest we saved money on the estate agents fees, didn't have the stress of keeping the house immaculate for viewings (hard with young children) & we really like the family we sold to.

tigsly · 19 April 2014 at 10:31PM

I posted 100 leaflets - and only posted to houses i'd have liked to live in , I got one responce.

We went and looked around - it would have been ok for us - not perfect but doable at the right price.

However, the vendor decided that they were nto ready to move.. I dont know if they didn't like us, were not comfy coming up with their own price.. they said something about wanting to be sure their children were settled (it was a large house - the kids were at uni and I thikn the mum thought they might come home again..)

In the end the leafleting came to nothing - but I did read lots of messages about leafleting working for people..

GolfFoxtrot · 20 April 2014 at 8:32AM

We leaflet dropped a street we were interested in living on, we just explained who we were and that we liked the area and were looking to buy privately. We had one hit (out of 100) but it was a house with the smallest garden on the street and we decided it wasn't for us in the end.

Here's my top tips:
- print out letters but hand write the envelopes even of you're only posting through the door and not sending by post it will help distinguish it from junk mail
- set up a new email address. You don't want hundreds of people having yours and they're free to set up.
- Buy a cheap pay as you go phone and use that number to give out. Ours cost £7 from Tesco and we also gave that number to all of the estate agents in our area. Now we've bought somewhere we will simply turn off the phone and the estate agents calls will stop

DKLS · 20 April 2014 at 8:41AM

I sold a house this way, I wasn't intending to sell, but received a number of postcards stating they would love to buy my house and if we ever wanted to sell to contact them first, I ignored these until a postcard came through the door with a number on I couldn't refuse.

georgiesmum · 20 April 2014 at 11:24AM

Sold my house this way, 12 months after a would be purchser had put leaflets through the door i got in touch.
going to do it myself as i am now ready to move.

LouiseAnne90_xo · 20 April 2014 at 3:02PM

Thanks all for your replies.
This is what I've written so far, please can I have opinions ? :hello:

Dear homeowner,

We hope you don’t mind us approaching you in this way, but we are looking to buy a house in the area and the style & location of yours particularly appeals to us.

We’d like a property that can be our forever family home so it will need at least 3 bedrooms. We will also consider houses that need updating. The reason we are contacting you directly is because there is nothing currently on the market that interests us.

We have sold our own property with the buyer ready to get moving when we find somewhere ourselves. They are willing to wait if need be, so if you need some time to determine your next move, then we are able to do this.

Our estate agent is XXXXXXXXXXX, if you wish to speak to them for clarification on any points or re-assurance of our genuine interest, please feel free.

If you are interested in selling your house to us then I would be grateful if you could either call or email so we can discuss this further. Obviously there would be no estate agent fees payable if we brought directly from you.

Thank you for reading this and we hope to hear from you shortly.

X FIRST NAMES X

X TEL NO. X

X EMAIL ADD X