Can I buy a house when my home ain't up for sale yet?

penguingirl

My parents were recently in this position. They got their house on the market asap (got removal men in to help declutter for marketing). While theirs was being marketed another couple had an offer provisionally accepted on the property my parents wanted, but had not put their own property up for sale yet. We advised my parents not to put in an offer until they were proceedable as we thought it would just get into a bidding war unnecessarily. Instead my parents accepted a sensible offer on their house and then put an offer on the other property- it was lower than the other couple's, but acceptable as they were proceedable and the other couple still hadn't started to market theirs.

I would never accept an offer from someone without their own property under offer and definitely not if it wasn't on the market- but I might use the offer to set the benchmark for other offers and give the impression there was interest in it. Your situation will only benefit the vendor

ClaretHead

Google "Bridging Loan". If you are confident that your current house will sell, and you can convince a financial institution that you are good for the money, then you CAN buy before selling. But interest rates may be high and you may be taking a big risk if the market turns.

BLOW_FLY

ClaretHead wrote: »

Google "Bridging Loan". If you are confident that your current house will sell, and you can convince a financial institution that you are good for the money, then you CAN buy before selling. But interest rates may be high and you may be taking a big risk if the market turns.

That's a very bad idea!

Not withstanding the fact that bridging loans are nigh on impossible to come by these days.

BF

sheff6107

What you are really asking is "will the owners of a house I like reserve it for me and remove it from the market whilst we all wait for my house to sell?"

Most people will only entertain this if you pay a cash deposit.

ellie27

To me as a seller you would be a 'time-waster' ]

I would be running about cleaning, rushing kids to eat dinner within 2 mins of putting it on table, sending them out the house for half an hour with their dad.... and to me you are not even in a position to make me an offer.

However, our last 'time-wasters' did surprise us and a few weeks later came back for a second viewing as they had their house on the market then, and fast forward another week they did buy our house and it all went smoothly.

I wouldn't accept an offer from someone who didn't have their house already 'under offer/sold'