Love a house that is SSTC, what would you do?

orangecrush

Haha now I definitely would not mind gazumping a property developer  

We've seen the same thing happen here - lovely houses turned into monstrosities by people with lots of money and no taste.  All in the interest of making more lots of money. 

I think the thing is though - you've already said you're interested.  Who defines tangible?  Should be the estate agent.  Trust them to get your interests put forward, as you said, if there's any change in its sale it will be in there interests to let you know. 

eidand

oh, if that is really a property developer then I would have no shame into going in with another offer ... They usually offer below the asking price anyway.

Mickey666

eve824 said:

Thanks. Yes, that's what the EA has said to me. What he hasn't done is told the vendor how interested we are. 
I don't want to put an offer in and gazump the other buyers, as I really dislike the practice. I would just like to be 'first in line' if you like, should the vendors have any issues with the current buyers. The problem is the vendors don't know we exist at the moment.

Why not just write a letter to the vendors explaining all of that?

hazyjo

If you'd viewed, I'd go against the grain and say write a brief letter.

But, without having viewed, I'd say definitely don't! However much you think something is perfect for you, even with a lot of work, sometimes viewing it changes that and you can't even say why.

I wish I had a quid for every house I  thought I'd buy! Even when prepared to do loads of work!

getmore4less

Just tell the agent, now you have sold my house you need to find me one like(house you want) .. . for £xxxx

Let them sort it out. 

Anamox

My estate agent pretty much set up what you're asking, except I'm a seller.

He rang us up with three offers, we accepted one. He told the other two, who still expressed interest, that they'd be told ASAP if our chosen buyer pulled out. A few weeks our buyer pulled out and he contacted both and we accepted one of them (who was obsessed with our house and gutted they didn't get it first time) within the hour. I'm sure your estate agent can do the same for you, put you in an unofficial queue and hopefully you'll be the only one in it. 

Skint_yet_Again

Be careful what you wish for. We missed out on a house that would really suit us in another part of the country we wanted to move to. A few months later we were ecstatic after it came back on the market. Our offer was accepted, but months later (!) after much arguing between the sellers who were divorcing they pulled out on the day of exchange saying they had decided to do the property up themselves & did we want to buy it when they had finished. 😱 We couldn’t find another property we could afford as the house prices in the area we were buying had shot up & so we lost our buyer. 

Move on, look for something else 

onwards&upwards

I think you should just let this one go and start looking seriously for something else. 

You could potentially mess around 3 or more sets of people here.  I presume you want to move so you will be looking at other properties, eventually you will get a buy on your house, then find one you like to buy, get an offer accepted, start the ball rolling on searches, mortgage etc.  

Then, when you are some way down the line with exchange in sight, this house becomes available again.  Do you tell the sellers that actually your offer doesn't stand anymore because you are too far down the line with another house?  Do you tell the sellers of your proceedings purchase you are pulling out?  Do you tell your buyers you are buying a totally different house now so all that time was wasted and there will be a long delay in them being able to buy yours?  

Davesnave

getmore4less said:

Just tell the agent, now you have sold my house you need to find me one like(house you want) .. . for £xxxx
Let them sort it out.

That doesn't work when it's the plot you are after, rather than the house.

We bought our house because of the plot. The property itself was sound, but weird, which was all fixable within a budget of £100- 150k.

However, to get anything approaching the same set of advantages within our  budget could easily take a year or more of searching, and that would be within a radius of 50 miles. Knowing what you want is only the start of a very long process, although there's always lottery-style luck.

Davesnave

eve824 said:

Hazyjo -  it's a total do-er upper and we would be predominantly buying for the plot, with the view of extending and refurbishing the existing house. It's the plot and location that we love, and we've seen that. The house is a bit grotty, to be honest - but that doesn't bother us as we are looking long term.

Most people here won't get this. They look at the house first! We gave up on that and started looking at the location/plot, going well under budget in many cases, because the house is the easier fix. Sure, we saw lots of nicer houses than ours, in the wrong places, or with a plot that just made us think 'Meh,' or worse.