to ask how you find offmarket houses.

[LemonSwan]

Hi everyone,

Please tell me your tips.

Everything worth purchasing in my area is sold prior to reaching the open market.

How to I get these properties or ones not even with estate agents yet?

Thanks in advance,

Make friends with estate agents and get on their mailing lists to be notified when they are about to market a property? Watch for video tours going live on YouTube, often (in our area) several days before being on the market. Risk being a nuisance and leaflet streets you are interested in.

Also, ask the people who have bought these properties how they found them.

I stuck a note through a door of a house that I thought was likely to be for sale.

In my case the property was advertised on the equivalence of gumtree in this country.

Employ a property buying agent. They will always see stuff first. We just sold our house. The first person through the door, before it was on the market, was a property search agent.

I've seen a few posts on nextdoor and neighborhood Facebook groups along the lines of "does anyone know of any 3/4 bed houses that will be up for sale soon"

Boomin.com
Or
Widen your search area

Where I live, people put signs up on local shop notice boards. Estate agents are very expensive here and don't seem to have any real legal obligations but have horrible punishing contracts! Noone wants to deal with them.

We've also had notes in the post box from families asking, they put an email address on so you can contact them if you are selling.

I wrote to all the local estate agents and met with them and they let me know. I also talked to the neighbours of houses I viewed, and the postmen etc, and as they liked me they let me in on new places coming up. It's more in the interests of neighbours to get themselves a good new neighbour than it is for the seller -- they're leaving, after all.

We sold off the market. The (many) viewers were people who were already on the EAs books having viewed similar houses through the EA.

When I lived in London we would get notes pistes through the door of the apartment block.

Thank you all. I think I am going to get some little cards made and slip them through doors of houses I like the look of and have a zoopla valuation in our price range.

Will let you know if it works!

Fingers crossed!