Can you put an offer on a house if yours isn't up for sale yet

mercedes125

We are wanting to sell our house but I would sooner find another house first .
Is this the best way to go about it or wouldn't we be able to put an offer on a house if we find one we like.
I don't really want to put ours on sale then get a buyer n just have to buy anything that I'm not keen on .
It's awkward

Gonzo1987

You can offer - but you're not in a position to proceed, if your's isn't on the market and might take over a year to sell then why would someone want to accept the offer when a cash buyer, someone in a closed chain or a FTB could come along.

jbainbridge

You can - but your offer is worth nothing as you are unable to proceed.

Wi88le

You can still put in an offer but it would leave you in a poor position as an un procedable buyer to the seller. There is no guarantee your house will sell quickly for the price you want so it's not a bad idea to get it listed now as you start looking at houses. If there are no houses that you like then you don't have to sell.

mercedes125

Thank you think we ought to see about getting ours on the market then .

MadelinesMum

I recently received an offer but the couple hadn't put their house on the market, so it does happen. They also offered £15k under the asking price.

I told the EA that I did not consider this as a true offer as they did not have the funds to proceed. He was not very pleased with me but I've already had one couple pull out because they didn't have enough money.

Hoploz

It's the age-old conundrum!

We were looking for something a bit special and rare so we found our ideal house then put ours on in order to offer once we had a buyer.

The ideal house then got taken off the market! We had some offers but nothing to move to so we didn't go ahead with any.

It was almost a year later when our second ideal house came up. We duly put ours back on and had a good offer quite quickly. We told our buyer we had found and they were happy to move fast. Great!

We put in our offer only for this second ideal house to be taken off the market as well. What bad luck!

Our buyers stayed with us. We looked frantically but it wasn't until the second ideal house came back on the market 6 months later that we could proceed.

We were astonished when it all eventually came together and we moved with a buyer who had visited only once, 8 months before moving in! They clearly knew what they wanted.

The point is, there is no right way. During the process I said to the agent I was worried about losing our buyer. He said yes, but if people really want the house they are often prepared to wait. Our buyer did, and so did we.

And to put it bluntly, you often don't really know how much you can afford to offer until you know the figure you're getting for selling yours. A few thousand on one can help with the other etc. So my advice is just go on the market - you can always withdraw if you change your mind! And it's the only way you will be considered a serious buyer.

C_Mababejive

Whatever happened to bridging loans...

phoebe1989seb

We were in the same position as Hoploz - looking for a very particular type of house and when we found that one in a million, ours was not yet on the market.

We did put in an offer - that wasn't taken seriously - but it did give the vendor an indication of our interest and it spurred us into action to finish off what had been a truly major project in order to get it up for sale and not lose out. Tbh, had we not seen that house we'd have dragged our feet over getting ours finished as we were well and truly exhausted from the physical side of renovating

Fortunately we secured a very keen buyer quite quickly and we were extremely lucky to be able to buy the house we wanted.

Being on the market yourself will put you in a better position certainly

KiKi

I put in an offer on *the* house - as soon as I saw it online I knew I wanted it and it would be mine! I went to see it, made an offer, and stuck my flat on the market. They rejected my offer, they wanted £5k more, and offered to take the house off the market and wait for me to sell. So I agreed.

The owner took the house of the market and waited nine weeks for me to sell my flat! He clearly wasn't in a hurry, but I was surprised how long it took to sell; there were points when he threatened to go back on the market, but it all worked out in the end.

Go for it - but you will need to get moving on the sale ASAP.

makeyourdaddyproud

We chose to take this route since we didn't want to lose the house when we were moving. We then sold afterwards.