Making an offer before selling

Legacy_user

Hi All,

Me and my partner viewed a house this weekend which we both really like and having just watched another we really liked go in less than week we want to make an offer. The only snag is my property is currently still on the market with no offers so far, it's been on a week and has had 5 viewings so far...

The house is a probate sale, so I suspect they will be after a fairly quick sale. Can I realistically make an offer at this stage? I know it's not ideal, but I feel like we could miss out on all the properties we like if we wait until after we've got an offer... My property is getting a lot of interest from buy-to-let investors and I feel like it's only a matter of time before we get an offer.

betsie

There is no harm in trying, the worst they can do is say they are not interested until you have sold. Explain your position, say you had a lot of viewings and feel an offer is likely in the next few weeks. Be honest though. Say you really love the house and don't want to loose out and will they give you 4 weeks to get an offer on yours. You might be lucky.

Asl77c

we bought our first home and it was a probate sale. Usually they have to give a certain amount of time for the marketing before accepting offers and ours went to sealed bids too. Given it is probate you have nothing to lose in doing it and equally they won't be in a rush they will just want the most amount of money id say even if it took longer.

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You can give it a try but unless the probate property has been on a while and your offer is for an attractive amount they are very unlikely to take it off the market and wait for you.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You may also end up disclosing your hand v waiting until you have a buyer and can make them a lower offer which you think they might take.[/FONT]

getmore4less

Establish the state of probate some are marketed in advance of obtaining grant.
If granted you can check the beneficiaries.
Are they motivate to sell no disputes..
is it occupied if not when does council tax kick in.
Is there IHT to pay on the estate(interest kicks in)

Is it priced to sell or at top end of range.

what can you do to accelerate your sale.
if B2L investors what will it rent for == gross yield on asking price.

Goath

There is nothing to stop you making an offer - but be prepared for someone else in a better position to come along and snap it up.


We did just that - made the mistake of viewing properties as soon as ours went on the market (before we found a buyer) found a property that we loved and put an offer in that was accepted but they would not (rightly so) take the property of the market.


However someone smiled on us, because we managed to find a buyer within 6 (looong) weeks and our offer was then formally accepted.


You just have to be prepared that you might lose out on the property that you like.

AnotherJoe

You can make an offer at any time but what it means is the key thing.

No one in their right mind would take a house off the market on the basis of an offer from someone that can't buy. Maybe the sellers aren't in their right mind(s) ?

It also works the other way with a probate sale in that unless it's gone through it may be many months before it can actually be sold. I'm putting a flat up for sale which can't be sold for several months because of that, but who knows maybe the stars will coincide with someone who hasn't sold yet and we'll each gradually get to the right point.

lovehols

As a seller, we've had EA ask us if we will.do viewings from people not on the market, and I have though I've found some of them a waste of time, like they are just looking with no intention.

Recently an elderly lady viewed, loved it and made an offer though she wasn't on market. I told her I couldn't accept her offer as she wasn't on the market though if she was in a position to proceed I would consider an offer around x price. She then went and marketed it with the same agent as me, it was good as agent would tell me exactly what viewings she had and feedback and kept me up to date. It's been two months though and she has yet to sell her property, she has reduced it and double boarded it. In the interim we just a week ago accepted an offer for the full asking price from someone under offer. Kept it available on Rightmove so the potential interested party isn't put off incase our offer falls through, their chain collapses etc.

I'd say make an offer but be prepared they may say they will consider it but will continue to market it etc and if someone else comes along in a better position etc they may just accept their price instead. My property is in a sought after location, a bungalow, popular with more elderly residents. What we hadn't accounted for was that most interested people were downsizing and had properties to sell, family homes needing modernization etc... and when in competition with new builds they just struggled. Three collapsed sales due to chains collapsing etc and it has taken far longer to sell ours than we thought.

ACG

I made an offer on my house in November (the end of) 2016.

I told the vendors that mine was not up for sale yet and I would not be putting it up for sale until January as we were going away over Christmas/New year, but because there was a huge amount of equity in it, we would more or less accept any reasonable offer in order for it to sell and that we would not be looking to complete until March time.

Surprisingly they accepted our offer.

We did not complete until May - but that was not our fault, it was my buyers solicitors.

System

So I spoke to them today, since there's a lot of interest and it's only been on the market less than a week, they will only accept full asking and will only give us 2 weeks to secure a sale on our property. We are happy to pay full asking price, but after speaking to the EA selling our property I don't feel confident we can secure a sale in 2 weeks without dropping our asking price down to a point where we couldn't afford to buy this property. It's sad, but I think we will have to let this one go.

I think lesson learned here is we can't really start looking to buy until we have an offer on our property, the properties we are looking at seem to be moving significantly quicker than the property I'm selling. What's really starting to worry me is the market (London & SE) appears to be on the brink of a small crash and I could find myself trapped in my current property

AnotherJoe

Are you moving locally mktuk?