Is there any point viewing houses when you haven't had an offer on yours yet?

marlasinger

Thanks for the responses. We have now booked a viewing for early next week. We were upfront with the estate agent and she said the vendors aren't bothered that we aren't proceedable yet.

At least we will know now whether we like the house or not, rather than waiting till last minute!

marlasinger

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Rule No. 3 of house buying : Never fall in love with a house

Surely that can't always be helped?

I'm curious, what is Rule No: 2? I'm guessing Rule 1 is: Location, location, location?

Davesnave

No2 is: Walk away from houses you might fall in love with when they turn out to be massively overpriced.

PS. I've said this numerous times before, but our last buyers weren't even on the market when they viewed. Knowing where that market went next, suggests they saved us thousands at a tricky time.

Clutterfree

Mickygg wrote: »

Personally I only allow viewings from people who can proceed. That's my choice.

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Likewise. As there's plenty of timewasters when selling a property as it is. Though there's nothing to stop you getting to know a locality well. Without seeing the interior of properties.

If our vendor thought the same I'd not now be sitting in this house and our buyer would not be sitting in our old house.

We viewed this house before we put ours on the market, liked it so put ours on the market.
Our buyer did the same.
It all worked out and we weren't time wasters. :-)

Littlebobo1981

Clutterfree wrote: »

If our vendor thought the same I'd not now be sitting in this house and our buyer would not be sitting in our old house.

We viewed this house before we put ours on the market, liked it so put ours on the market.
Our buyer did the same.
It all worked out and we weren't time wasters. :-)

We did exactly the same, have to save we found it frustrating when people viewed our house without having a mortgage in place though, but we did the same so ..you know just got to suck it up sometimes

Thrugelmir

Clutterfree wrote: »

If our vendor thought the same I'd not now be sitting in this house and our buyer would not be sitting in our old house.

We viewed this house before we put ours on the market, liked it so put ours on the market.
Our buyer did the same.
It all worked out and we weren't time wasters. :-)

No one is suggesting for one moment that everyone is. Some of us would prefer potentially serious buyers from the off. Even those viewers that purport to be proceedable can be equally as frustrating to deal with. After a number of house moves over the years just a personal preference.

Brexit_Fan

You can do so much research online these days, we do our homework first and make a shortlist of properties we are interested in buying, but only start viewing when we have accepted an offer on ours.

We don't however stop someone viewing our property who is not yet in a position to buy it. Their situation could change very quickly.

Mickygg

Clutterfree wrote: »

If our vendor thought the same I'd not now be sitting in this house and our buyer would not be sitting in our old house.

We viewed this house before we put ours on the market, liked it so put ours on the market.
Our buyer did the same.
It all worked out and we weren't time wasters. :-)

I appreciate that there are times having someone come round not proceedable can work.

My experience over 5 house moves is after the third I was fed up with people's feedback saying 'really like the house but we haven't got ours on the market yet'. Once I stupidly accepted an offer when the buyers were not on the market. They took weeks to put their house on market, the EA stopped working for me thinking the house sale was effectively wrapped up even though I said continue to find a proceedable buyer, and then 3 months or so later still no sale from the buyers so I had to start all over again.

As Thrugelmir says its personal experience and choice. Sometimes you get lucky, I didn't.

Clutterfree

Thrugelmir wrote: »

No one is suggesting for one moment that everyone is. Some of us would prefer potentially serious buyers from the off. Even those viewers that purport to be proceedable can be equally as frustrating to deal with. After a number of house moves over the years just a personal preference.

Mickygg wrote: »

I appreciate that there are times having someone come round not proceedable can work.

My experience over 5 house moves is after the third I was fed up with people's feedback saying 'really like the house but we haven't got ours on the market yet'. Once I stupidly accepted an offer when the buyers were not on the market. They took weeks to put their house on market, the EA stopped working for me thinking the house sale was effectively wrapped up even though I said continue to find a proceedable buyer, and then 3 months or so later still no sale from the buyers so I had to start all over again.

As Thrugelmir says its personal experience and choice. Sometimes you get lucky, I didn't.

I also think it depends on the type of property you are selling/buying.
For example, if you are after a standard 3 bed house on an estate, then if you miss one another one will usually come into the market sooner rather than later so yes the vendor can afford to be choosy.

We weren't even planning on moving but a period property came on the market that we liked the look of. We viewed it, told the vendor we wanted it but needed to market and sell ours first and if it was still for sale we'd make an offer then.
We were moving from a period property too and were aware that limited our possible purchasers so accepted viewings from unproceedable buyers too. Yes, some did just come to have a nosey but the lady who bought it, like us wanted to find a house before marketing her own property.

As I said, it really does depend on the type of home you are selling and buying. IMHO the more "niche" the property, the more flexible you need to be.

NicNicP

We viewed a house and then decided to put ours on the market. Luckily our house sold the day after going on right move.