Neighbours selling - would it make you nervous?

Bad_Accountant

ele_91 said:

I am selling my end terrace, back to back house. It was sold STC since last October, my buyer has been very patient waiting for the chain. In the last few weeks, my neighbours house has also gone up for sale - they are tenants and their landlord is selling, due to her business no longer being viable. As far as I know the tenants are staying. Now my neighbour behind has approached me and said they are also thinking of selling as they bought the house as a renovation project which is finished (this is true, the house has been totally gutted and rebuilt). This has made me panic that my buyer will wonder why we are all selling. Is this a huge jump to conclusions or would it make you nervous? 

Not right now so much. Everyone’s selling to get the SDLT holiday.
We bought one of two neighbouring houses both for sale. Also another two houses for sale opposite and another one 60m away down the street! I did wonder why all were up and researched the street a lot looking for planning applications, HMOs, crime stats etc. But it’s been fine so far. It was just the selling frenzy I think. 

nyermen

moneysavinghero said:

Your biggest problem might be that your buyers see the other house that is presumably being sold with no chain and wonder why they are being so patient waiting for your chain to complete. Maybe they will consider making an offer on your neighbours house instead.

Except that one has tenants I thought and presumably is being marketed as BTL.

OP - It sounds like yours is most proceeded (any change by your buyer would likely lose SDLT reduction?), yours is more competitively priced, and if they show concern explain that the neighbours are a BTL, and the other is following you - and they can check all that themselves.

TBH one thing I didn't do after my offer, was keep checking the same road for others going on the market.  Only did that at offer and before instructing the conveyancer...

gab3x

We bought in a street which we love where on average 5-6 houses sell in a year (total 100 houses on the street). That means at any one time there are a bunch of EA flags in the street. House next to one we offered went up and was advertised at £10k lower than what we agreed our sale for but it needed more work done to it and even though it was same floor plan as our semi it had. 3 bedrooms whereas our has 2. This means small rooms and bathrooms so we weren't bothered by price difference.
So many houses on sale did make us slightly suspicious so we asked around. Turns out that these semis cannot be extended so when families outgrow 2-3 beds they need to move. We confirmed this by talking to people on the street and since we moved to our neighbours. 
Three months on from our move and we couldn't be happier living in our new street. The community is great, no traffic, there are literally no negatives to living here and yes, there are still a few EA flags on the street.

Nikkilou86

There were three other houses for sale in our street when we bought our house - I had a nosey at the others on rightmove but we were buying ours as it had been extended and gave us the space we wanted. 

One of the others had been extended upwards rather than at the side and whilst it had one more bedroom it had less living space and for various reasons three storeys didn’t suit us. Another had space for the extension our house has which has since been built but again it didn’t suit us to do that level of building work and the final one was the original house and whilst I’d have loved the huge garden it was pretty much the same as we were selling so again not what we were looking for. The floor plan was handy to work out the original layout of ours though. 

Had they been four houses in a row I might have looked a bit closer but equally it was the house we really wanted so I don’t think it would have bothered me that much.

NaughtiusMaximus

Sorry to say this OP but it would make me VERY wary, my first thought would be 'are they all moving due to a neighbour from hell?'.

Having said that I am probably more twitchy about this than most people on account of the fact I once had the misfortune of living a couple of doors down from a delightful family who fitted that description.

bex2012

I think though, sometimes these things go in waves. Where we are, there will be no houses up for sale for 2-3 years, and then all of a sudden there will be 5-6 houses on the market, like now. Nothing at all untoward, its just the way things go!

justworriedabit

Its a good time to sell is why people are selling.

jenni_fer

It depends on the street / situation. It would make me do a little more research but these things do tend to come in waves, and more so at the moment as things were quiet for so long. We're on a new-ish estate, everyone moved in at the same time and at similar points in their lives so lots are ready to move on at a similar time too, it's just the way it goes.