Selling without buying

fosters022

I read a lot of investment and entrepreneurial books and regularly come across the idea of obtaining a contract to sell someone’s house for say £100k and then selling for say £105k and keeping the £5k. Is this allowed in the UK and where would you start?

Alter_ego

Open an estate agency

GDB2222

fosters022 said:

I read a lot of investment and entrepreneurial books and regularly come across the idea of obtaining a contract to sell someone’s house for say £100k and then selling for say £105k and keeping the £5k. Is this allowed in the UK and where would you start?

Yes, it's allowed. How do you find people who will be stupid enough, though?

user1977

Yes, it's allowed - it's often what the "we buy any house" sort of outfits get up to. But generally buyers (and in particular their mortgage lenders) are averse to it.

GDB2222

The way this is done is as follows:

"Hello, I'm a developer. I'll buy your house for 25% over market value."

"Oh, that's good, where do I sign?"

"The offer is subject to my getting planning permission, and that can take up to 2 years."

"Okay, I'll still sign"

2 years later, house prices have risen 50%, so the "developer" exercises his free option. As I said, it's hard to find people stupid enough.

theoretica

Exactly the same idea - but much easier to start - would be agreeing to give someone £1 for every DVD of theirs you sell and trying to make £1.05 off the sale.

NameUnavailable

fosters022 said:

I read a lot of investment and entrepreneurial books and regularly come across the idea of obtaining a contract to sell someone’s house for say £100k and then selling for say £105k and keeping the £5k. Is this allowed in the UK and where would you start?

Yes. This is essentially what most Estate Agents do, sells the property for a % of the sale price.

Just post up an advert somewhere and off you go.