Moving house - what order to do things?

[MrBennOfFestivalRoad]

We're looking to move soon but having lived in our current house for ages, I can't remember what order we did things in last time and it's probably changed anyway!

• Get current house valued and put on market
• Start viewing other houses
• Make offers on other houses
• Apply for mortgage (we don't have one at the moment)
• Anything else...

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[wowfudge]

I would speak to a broker and do some research as to how much you can borrow first so you know what you can afford.

[mysteryfairy]

If you need to sell your house to buy another shouldn't accept offer in your own property come before making offers on others? Ideally (with exceptions for local conditions) people want to know you are in a position to proceed before they accept an offer from you.

If you are moving locally for more space or school catchment or whatever I would suggest do some research into the market to make sure the sort of thing you want is feasible on your budget etc.

[MrBennOfFestivalRoad]

Thanks for your replies. I don't think that budget will be a problem given the value of our current house and that we live in a very cheap area. School catchment not an issue, and we already know where we would want to buy well and have seen some houses that we like advertised So I guess really my questions are: can we view houses before we have an offer on our house, we are 100% certain that we want to move but wouldn't want sellers to think that we are wasting their time by looking too early; and do we need to have a mortgage offer in place to make an offer?

[TheAuthoress]

I've only bought (still in first house) but I think I'd:

Get house valued
Go to mortgage advisor with house value and see what we could afford
Check out houses online in desired area to check we're happy with what we can afford
Get house on market
Start viewing houses in our desired area and price range
Accept offer
Put in offer for new house

As I say, I haven't sold before but I wouldn't have a problem with prospective buyers coming to see my house who hadn't accepted a firm offer on their own yet, as long as theirs was up for sale.

[Trazzletoes]

You can view houses whenever you like in the process! But people might be a bit snarky if you say that your house isn't on the market yet. Or if you say you are just looking to see if you like what you can afford.

Having said that we ended up buying one of the first houses we looked at which was a while before we put our house on the market.