Not allowed to view a property!

[MissMildred]

Just wondering if this is a 'thing'.....
We're not officially 'on the market', but are tentatively looking for a sideways or upwards move in the same area to gain a larger garden, fewer neighbours and room to extend in the future. We are in the south east but outside of London. The idea would be that if we see something that fits the bill, we'll go on the market immediately and we do have a really saleable house (school catchments/ nice interior/ not much else in the price range).
Thing is, I don't want to waste the time of agents and buyers, because if we go on the market now, it could be some time before we find something that fits the bill.
So......there is a an old cottage on the market less than 10mins away, we drive past it regularly, have seen the interior pics. Looks chocolate box from the outside and ticks the garden/location box, but clearly needs a lot of updating, despite the blurb saying 'well presented'. I can tell from comparables that it is overvalued. It has been on sale for 3 months and I keep coming back to it as it might be suitable - from the photos I can't tell if the ceiling height is low and can't see a good view of the kitchen. Hard to judge the potential.
Just contacted the agent to arrange a viewing and just had a call back to say the vendors refuse to allow viewings from anyone not on the market. I asked if it was under offer and was told 'no offers' but had lots of viewings. I explained that we were serious for the right property, but was told that the vendors are firm that they will only have viewings from people on the market or under offer. It has been on since the end of Feb.
I used to work in the London market many moons ago and never really came across this. Thing is, we could actually view it and if suitable, go straight on - hard to know until we see it! Is this normal now - AIBU?

We didn't put our house on the market until we had our offer accepted, but that was because we wanted to move somewhere quite specific from somewhere small and generic and didn't want to sell ours and feel pressured to find somewhere in 3 weeks or end up messing the buyer around. We had no problem with arranging viewings.

There are a lot of time wasters especially for period properties. Some people make a special day trip from the other side of the country to view lots of property they could never even afford. Very weird but true.

Just say you are on the market and wing it. What are the odds of them checking.

I think buslybarbara is right though - they'll never check. We were asked quite often whether we had our mortgage sorted when we were looking, we actually did have a broker and said so but obviously they had no way of knowing that we were being honest.

How can you be ‘extremely serious’ without yours even on the market?theres a massive assumption there you’ll sell super fast, without even testing the market. Extremely serious is SSTC. The ‘we will move if we find something we fancy’ is tak8ng a massive (and usually very personal) view of your property being instantly saleable. How would you feel after 10 ‘extremely serious’ viewers had either got nowhere with a sale or actually weren’t interested. Viewings are a ball ache and generally eat a weekend.

Tell them you're not sale dependant?

My friend had to give her postcode, so they could check if she was on the market.

I hear the 'timewaster' point of view, however I think it's a case of the EA/Vendors seeming to want people who 'need' to move, rather than 'want' to move. We don't 'need' to move because we're looking for something specific in our very local area, but that isn't to say we aren't serious about 'wanting' to move. They've made the decision to go on the market. If we see it and like it, we'll be straight on. It is their choice and their house, but if they are 'serious' about selling......they are cutting us out of the equation completely. If it hasn't had offers in 3 months I understand they're possibly a bit fed up. What if we are their potential buyer?

If they have a room for B&B just book yourself in, if you are interested you can maybe do a private sale and save EA fees.

Put a home made sign in your front garden and tell the agent you hope to sell privately to someone you know is interested. Why pay agents' fees if you don't need to.

Well we were renting before we bought so weren't on the market and we only had 2 months notice to give so obviously the house wasn't up for rent either. Lots of vendors are only interested in buyers who can be quick otherwise they'll lose their onward property. They don't want someone to make an offer then faff around for 6 months while their property doesn't sell.

I lived in a chocolate box period cottage. We had so many time wasters who were just being nosey- it was awful. After over 70 viewings our estate agent said they would only show serious buyers around who had an offer on their house and were in a position to move. We had to take our 'for sale' sign down as people would knock on the door demanding to view there and then (just to be nosey).

We only put our house on the market to buy a particular house (hadn't planned on moving). It was incredibly stressful as our offer wasn't accepted until we had an offer. The whole process took a year but fortunately worked out in the end.

Yes ~ I declined views by people not on the market. PITA to have troops of nosey viewers not serious ready to move. Of course you might miss out on a potential buyer - but a risk worth taking for me.

we'll be extremely serious

But you wont be, not if you aren't in a position to put an offer in on the house, you'll just be speculative viewers. Even if you did put an offer in, it wouldn't mean anything, the vendor would continue showing others round the house anyway.

There's very little point in viewing when you aren't in a position tp put in an offer. If I got an offer from someone who hadn't even got their house on the market (or in fact got an offer on their house) then I certainly wouldn;t be taking my house off the market - I'd tell them I'd keep thier offer inmind but if someone in a better position to buy came along, they'd get the house. In terms of time it makes no difference - you can't buy their house until you have sold yours.

People put offers on house because they want to reserve them - people who are not on the market often do this - they want to put some kind of imaginary retainer on your house, while they look around at others, and thier looking doesn't start to get serious until they've got on offer on their house.

No offer from someone who hasn't sold is a serious offer, you may really really like the house, but you can't buy it because you don't have the money, so your offer is based on nothing.

We've been looking for a cash investment property recently and no-one's asked for proof we have the money, before booking to the viewings, so just say you are looking to invest!

@LivingMyBestLife @KurriKurri ordinary run of the mill (but very pretty) detached bungalow but on an extensive bit of land with a little orchard.

It was in the hands of executors and turned out the beneficiaries didn't want to wait for a chain to complete/mortgages to go through to get their hands on the cash!

Their prerogative but still annoys me every time I drive past and see the monstrous modern four houses squashed onto the land after the beautiful bungalow and orchard were flattened by a developer

I am a responsible adult in a professional position with qualifications which far out weigh Estate Agent qualifications.

What an unpleasant attitude towards someone who is just carrying out the instructions of their client!

I think the problem is in this market you could be waiting months to sell your place and so for the seller you aren't the ideal proposition.

If you want to view go on the market. You can always give notice but at least then you can gauge interest levels. We also asked estate agents not to show people who weren't ready. We had two offers from people who hadn't sold. Not helpful to us as neither could proceed.

We didn’t have our house on the market as we didn’t need to sell (inheritance). But what we did have was mortgage in principle & evidence of inheritance. We only put our house on the market when we found this one. We also completed on our new one before we sold the old one.

I can understand their logic. We are currently trying to sell and lost out on our dream house because we didn't get ours on the market in time and lost out to a proceedable buyer. Kicking ourselves for not getting our act together and getting on the market earlier rather than waiting until we'd seen something we want.
We're now in the position of having an offer accepted on a property but we can't proceed until we have an offer on ours so every viewing feels very tense, I'm very close to saying no to people who aren't on the market as they do feel like time wasters.

Can't you just tell them that you intend to rent your current house out? I did that because a house came on the market that was so perfect for us according to the particulars at a time when we were not expecting to move house, but it seemed to tick all boxes so I wanted to see it. If I'd liked it we would have probably rented ours out so it was not a lie- but the house was so different in reality to the carefully photographed bits on the website that it did not matter as I did not want to proceed. No one asked to check when I said that though, and there was another viewing straight after me so the vendors had not got it tidy just for my sake!

There was another thread about this recently. I think it is crazy to be so prescriptive with something that has been on the market for so long.

Yep I did this when I was selling my last home- only viewings for ftb, Rhodes on market must have mortgage in place.
This was after I spent a Sunday morning rushing around sorting our house for a 9.30am viewing only for the bloke to me at the end of the viewing ‘it’s lovely but been turned down for a mortgage thought I’d still come as I didn’t want to waste your time’ 🤔

You can't have an offer accepted around here unless you're under offer yourself, or are a cash buyer/first time with mortgage in principle.

I think it's reasonable to stop time wasters.

One of my colleagues recently said that her and her mums "hobby" is looking around v expensive houses at the weekend. They have no intention of moving