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 are in this position. Like a pp we were very accommodating at the start and I would run out of the house at an hour's notice. 2 months down the line 40 viewings later and an offer from someone not proceedable we are at the point where we will only accept viewings from people who proceedable.

I have a 1 year old and a dog so keeping the house viewing ready is hard work!

jist to add I will still allow non proceedable viewings if they are in the same block as a proceedable one. So for example we might have 4 viewings on Saturday and I would happily have one of them as non proceedable but not all.

Very normal here too. I work in an estate agent in a very busy area. Unless you can buy without selling you are not proceedable. Get yours valued. It shows that you do intend to sell at some point. Don't always assume that your house will sell immediately either.

Normal here too. Although i phoned up about a house insaw which wouldnhave been perfect and the agent asked my position. Said we were not yet on the market. She asked where we were. I told her and she said we sould har no problem selling ours, they go in days here, and showed us the house. Sadly, while the house needed everything doing and that wasn't an issue, the garden was awful and couldnt have been made any better so we didnt move there.

They think they will prevent time wasters but plenty of people actually end up buying houses when there weren't on the market originally. We've done it!

Just realised that they use one of the rooms as a B&B - perhaps I should book in for the evening

Oh, do that! Then over breakfast, you can ask them why they're selling, and can you have a look round.

We have been looking for a house in a particular location for over a year, nothing suitable has come up. We know that our house will sell quickly so don't want to put it on the market until we find a house otherwise we could end up looking for a rental as well as a new home.

There are a lot of people on here suggesting the OP lies to the agent about her position just to get a viewing - perhaps you can now see why estate agents have a hard time doing their jobs? But of course when your buyer turns out to have lied, takes a long time to buy your house because it turns out after all that they are not CASH buyers or even on the market - its always the bastard estate agents fault!!

If there werent so many potential vendors not putting their houses on the market until they find Their dream Home then there would be many more properties for all to choose from.

A local estate agent here won't let anyone view houses on their books until a) they've sold their house and b) they've seen the 'mortgage advisor' that works at that agency. It's bonkers! We were cash buyers and they still tried to insist that we saw their mortgage advisor

But of course when your buyer turns out to have lied, takes a long time to buy your house because it turns out after all that they are not CASH buyers or even on the market

It can work the other way too when you view a house you love and put an offer on, only to be told that it may be a long wait as the sellers have not found anywhere to go yet as they had to put their house on the market before they were able to view anything!

That was exactly what I was going to say festive I am not going to waste people's time/hopes when there is nothing for me to buy.

The bottom line is that it is not difficult to sell or buy a property - what is difficult is buying and selling at the same time which is what most people have to do and if anyone in the process isnt completely honest about their situation this can cause huge problems down the line.

When we asked to view our current house we were told that the owners would allow viewings only from people with an offer on their current property! Luckily we had decided to wait to ask to see this house, which we desperately wanted, until we had a firm offer, but that seemed quite a harsh thing to insist. They didn't mention anything about time wasters and neither was there any particular urgency to move, but perhaps they didn't want people viewing who just wanted to have a nosy round.

The simple answer is while your house is not on the market you are missing out on a buyer. Furthermore you are not proceedable as you are not under offer.

I have noticed that since Brexit the market is slow and not much available. We were lucky to sell our house last year but it took 3 months being on the market to finally go under offer, some of those that viewed were time wasters i.e not on the market or even under offer. So I totally understand why the sellers do not want you to view. You may think your house will get snapped up but I think you are deluded in this current market.

Who's to say you're not buying a second house?? Do they want to sell it or what?

When i was a kid and we sold our farm house we had loads of people who just came for a nosey. Drove us kida mad as we got kicked outside and had to tidy 😉
People used to ask to get pictires taken with our goats and horses?? Not what normal house viewings involve. It can be stressful having people view who are eaither being nosey or aren't ready to proceed.

Yes, we were refused viewings by some estate agents (South East) because we didn’t have an agreement in principle for a new mortgage, let alone ones who wouldn’t let us view until our house had sold. The property market is much slower now that I can’t imagine them being so fussy here at the moment, but it seems it is a thing.

We went under offer not long ago, in the south east of England, not in london. We had loads of viewings before going under offer and the work involved in getting a house with two young children, two full time workers, two cats and a puppy ready each time was huge. We began to refuse people just like the OP as many had a misguided idea that they would sell quickly once they found the property they wanted to buy. Bar very few, NO ONE in the area is selling quickly and since offers will not be accepted from those not in a position to proceed, i don’t blame the vendor for not showing you round. We are now going through a fast exchange and completion, into rented and then into a new build later this year which is massively stressful and would only have been made worse by a buyer who wasn’t actually ready to buy “falling in love” with our house.

The sellers are right - there are lots of time wasters around who view properties for sale as a recreation! Meanwhile they will not entertain an offer from you until your house has had some interest.

Best put your houses on the market ASAP if you don't want to lose out on the property you want.

Totally normal around here. No one I know would consider even accepting an offer from someone who didn't at least have a house sold STC.

Sucks really, because it's a huge risk selling without having anywhere to go to and risks you pulling out of a sale. Just as horrid really.

Let's be real, house buying/selling. Always a complete arsing nightmare. Always.

Why not go to ES or whoever you would chose to market your house, give them details of your property, ask them to visit for an inspection/valuation. Then, tell them you will put property officially up for sale if you can buy the one you are interested. That way you are at least "in the process" of going on the market and may satisfy the vendor.

Put your house on the market arrange and go to view. If you decide not to buy you can always take your house off the market. Try to get your viewing fast and avoid other people coming to view you before you decide.

I remember it was like this 20 years ago, when I last moved. You aren't a potential buyer until you've listed your own house.

If they could, most people would prefer to find the house they want before they progress selling the house they've got, but if everyone did this then the person at the head of a chain of say 8 sales would take have to wait years between getting an offer and completing. The only fair way to do things is for everyone to be in sync, that means you don't get to look at other people's houses unless you're letting people look at yours.

We moved in February, while our house was on the market we declined viewings from people who didn't have their own home on the market, we were ideally hoping to have viewings from people who had already received offers on their house and that's what we got in the end.

My friend had to do this when she sold her house. She lived in quite an unusual old property in a picture postcard village, and had so many timewasters coming to look round for a day out, no intention of buying at all. So she asked the estate agents to limit viewings to those who were already on the market and if possible had offers, as she was keen to complete quickly too.