to ask how you sell and buy a house

[winterlover777]

I'm sorry to sound so dumb right now but I'm really confused.

We are about to put our maisonette on the market, it's a new build and we only lived in it a year. We now want to buy a house.

However, we've seen a house we love and want to put an offer in. Most people seem to say that we should have our place sold STC before we go for something else. On one hand, I understand this because it means we are ready in the process. But surely, if we have sold STC and there's no houses we want to buy, we will just keep delaying our buyers until we do with them eventually pulling out if it gets too ridiculous?

So basically, what did you do regarding selling and buying?

You need to be sold STC to get sellers and their agents to take you seriously. They want you to be “proceedable”. Your buyers then just have to wait and everyone hopes you get a chain sorted soon. Remember the process from offer to completion usually takes months anyway.

Your offer won’t be accepted until you are able to progress - ie you have a proceedable buyer for yours. The house you like will remain on the market and someone else may be able to get it before you get a buyer. There is no reason for a vendor to accept your offer then wait.

Also be aware that if you’ve lived in a new build for a year, when you sell you are likely to achieve less than you paid - it is no longer a brand new house and so the premium price you paid is gone. And in the market at the moment you may find prices have also fallen slightly in your area.

I’d be really sure you want to do this right now. Moving in 12m is a dramatic decision and one that will cost you a lot of money in lefals, moving fees, stamp duty, mortgage exit fees etc.

No seller is going to accept an offer from a buyer who doesn’t even have their property on the market.

Put it on, which doesn’t necessarily take long, have all paperwork you need and get the viewings lined up. If you are lucky you might get it but there are always more properties coming up.

I see your point but it’s a tricky situation. If you want them to accept your offer and take their property off the market for viewings then you need to be in a position to proceed with the sale.

They may accept your offer but refuse to take their off the market and if someone else comes along sooner ready to buy then they will sell it to them.

Ours is going on the market - the pictures have been taken, the measurements done, the docs all signed, I'm just waiting on my estate agent to put it up. I was hoping it would be up yesterday.

So, the issue is that they won't take it off the market? Hmm.

The house owners at the moment are going to buy their mother's property down the road so didn't seem in any urgent rush - not sure if that could work in our favour.

Our newbuild is a very particular circumstance, we didn't pay a premium, we actually got it cheap because the developer needed to go back to his own country and getting a new build mortgage on maisonettes needs a 25% deposit for 99% of lenders. So we got it under market value and have, as a result, made enough to cover stamp duty etc on a new house.
We need to move due to circumstances.