To put notes through letterboxes of these houses?

[makeupforever]

My DM has finally decided she wants to move, I am overjoyed as her area has been deteriorating for a while and I just want her to be able to enjoy life somewhere nicer. She owns her house outright but she is limited as to what she will be able to buy as her house isn't worth tons.

We have found a quiet street of small houses that are absolutely perfect for her, they appear to be mostly owned by older people. And they historically are within her budget. We've just missed one up for sale as an offer has been accepted, I asked the estate agent and he said they get snapped up quickly.

She's got her heart set on living there which means a lot to me. I'm well aware that you can't have everything you want and there is a huge chance it won't work out and she won't be able to live there. But I'm willing to do everything in my power to try and help her as she has not had an easy ride and I just want her to enjoy her life now in nice surroundings.

I was thinking of putting notes through the doors of the remaining houses with my name, contact info and some context, and asking if anyone had plans to put their house on the market soon. On some nice note cards? Just on the off chance someone was putting theirs up for sale so it would give us a head start to get everything lined up.

WIBU to do this? Or has anyone ever done this before?

DO IT! I was 3 days from moving out and about 3 weeks from putting my house in the market when someone did what you're suggesting. He needs a home for his elderly grandmother that is close to his so he was looking on my street. My realtor contacted his and we never even listed the house. Sold without a hassle.

I've had a note like this through my door. It was printed out, while not looking like something from an agent (so clearly done on a home printer) and was written in a genuine style, giving a little bit of info about the couple looking for a home in my street and demonstrating that they were ready to move.

I would definitely say that it's for your mum and that she's a cash buyer. There's a fine line between making it personal enough for people to see that it's genuine, and sounding unprofessional though. So run it by some people you trust and who know how to write, and ensure that it shows that you're serious and know what you're doing, while also sounding pleasant.

Good idea

100% do it. You’ve got nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain!

Good luck

My friends bought their house this way. No harm in it

I know 2 people who did this and found their next home.

I'd be flattered personally if someone did this! I'd think they put a lot of thought into it.

I sold my house to someone who put a note through my door. I kept the note for a year after receiving it. Saved us the hassle and costs of using an intermediary.

My parents sold their old house to a leaflet dropper - DO IT!

Certainly worth a try. I would suggest either a good quality card in thick envelope or thick paper. Flimsy paper etc might be just caught up with junk mail etc. I think either a card or thick paper and envelope would make it less likely to be thrown out unread.

My brother had his heart set on a particular area, so he went into the local pub and asked if they knew of any properties that were about to go on the market. And they did! He got his dream home and all without paying estate agent fees too.
Anything is worth a go, good luck

I’ve done this a few times.

One time the lovely owner telephoned me to say he wasn’t selling but thanked me for the note.

Another time a relative of the owner telephoned me and literally told me off for putting the note through.

And another time I didn’t hear anything.

I’ve also had a note through my door and wasn’t offended at all. If I’d been thinking of selling I would definitely have contacted them.

Go for it, if you don’t ask you won’t know.

I'd do it !

If you don't mention being a cash buyer you could say that your mum is in a position to buy and has no chain.

My friend did this, bought a flat off a chap, kept in touch and became life partners not long after. Nothing ventured etc..

Worth a try.

Don't be like the idiot who put a note through our door asking if we'd consider selling but left no contact number or address

I was secretly glad as I think DH would have been tempted for the right price!

I've done this before in London but got no responses.

Can't hurt though.

I can't see any harm in it - and going on PPs, it obviously works sometimes; but I'm utterly amazed that people would respond to them. I suppose, if you're wanting to/considering moving but are worried about your house's saleability or the market in general, it might give you confidence and spur you to action.

That said, we recently agreed a sale for a deceased family member's house. We had had a few speculative notes through the door over the months - one from a local property developer and a couple of handwritten ones (probably genuine, but could have been a ploy). It's a style of house that there aren't that many of in the area and people might well have picked up on the signs that it was very much a doer-upper and maybe hoped for a good price (or maybe realised/guessed that the resident was very old and possibly thought that it may become vacant soon).

However, I would just never reply to a note like this, personally. It makes me wonder what people's motive is, in a world where, if they were genuinely interested in the house and in paying a fair market value for it, they could simply set up a Rightmove alert on the postcode and then get into action once they see it up for sale.

Somebody put a note through my door about my very old car, enquiring if I was interested in selling, and when it's something like that where you might be more interested in it going to 'a good home' rather than maybe getting an extra £50 or so from a scrapper to crush it into a tiny cube, that makes a lot of sense.

But when it's something as expensive as a house, surely the way to get it is to have an alert or keep your eye on the market and then, if it goes up for sale, jump to it and make the best offer. That's what's happened with us: one man was desperate to get it, so he asked discreetly about what kind of offer might be successful, offered it and, after seeing all other interest and offers that came in, we accepted his offer. Who in their right mind wouldn't put it on the open market to see what best price they could get, in favour of just choosing somebody who put a speculative note through the door? House prices aren't an exact science and you could be doing yourself out of £10, £20, £30K or much more by not even inviting offers from all-comers.

Also, I would be wary of getting somebody who turns out to be a chancer and/or nightmare buyer. Of the offers we received, the one that was (by a shade) the highest (not that he would have ever honoured it) was from a person whom the EA strongly cautioned us against going with - even though this meant the EA declining the personal bribe that this man offered to him!! This person was a regular enquirer with them and he well knew his history, tricks, timewasting and highly dubious practices and basically gave us the 'bargepole' heads-up. We wouldn't have had a clue about that ourselves. If this man had put a note through and we'd made contact and given him an opportunity to get his foot in the door (as it were), we could have expected a lot of heartache, frustration and disappointment along the way as a direct result.

I think there's a lot to be said to having a professional EA as a middle-man - ours has been outstanding, got us the best price and earned their commission several times over imho.

To add, I wasn't offended in the slightest to receive the notes through the door - just baffled as to who would choose their buyer from such an arbitrary contact method and then automatically lock out the rest of the entire market without even testing it.

Some people want the easy option i guess. If you're happy with the offer.

Estate agents do it all the time so why not you !

I ignore those ones too - but at least I assume that, were I to respond, the EA would attempt to find the best offer from their (claimed) pool of interested people and advertise it on the open market.

I did this years ago for a specific house in a village but it turned out that the person who lived there had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Our approach caused distress.

To be honest, although it would be the very last thing you'd want or intend to do, you never can know how it might be received. My family member had bad MH issues and, had she been physically well enough in her later years to see and deal with her own post, a letter like this would have really distressed her too. Whereas a less vulnerable person would see it as a 'just in case' free-to-ignore expression of interest, she would have remembered the name of the person who signed the letter, been hugely disturbed by it and shouted it up on a daily basis in perpetuity to the voices in her head about 'this Sally Smith who's trying to get me out of my home so that she can live here instead'.

How can you possibly know the top price that your house could fetch on the open market? Of course, everybody would prefer to avoid the EA fees if they could, but if you end up selling for £20K less than they could have got you, you've not really 'saved' by avoiding their 1% or whatever, have you?

You get that they’re not asking you for a free or discounted house, right?

Maybe it's just me, but I would assume that they were hoping to bag themselves a good deal - and thus have me sell it for significantly less than I could otherwise have got for it on the open market. What other possible reason could they have for contacting you directly other than to secure the purchase before anybody else has a chance to offer you more?

Kirstie and Phil always try to use their fame/muscle and push for offers made through them to include a demand to also take it off the market. Now, a lot of buyers use that as a tactic to strengthen their hand, but how does that actually benefit the seller in any way - especially if they do it the instant it comes on to the market? Others may disagree, but it seems highly, highly dubious to me. I see it as a clear admission that they know I could get more for it from another buyer - if they were confident that they'd offered the best market price, they'd be more than happy to wait a week or so for that fact to become evident when nobody else offers as much/more.

In fact, if somebody put a note through saying "could you kindly let me know if you ever decide to put it on the market" (as opposed to "let's do a private deal ourselves"), you can still avoid the EA fees if you end up selling to them, having tested the rest of the market. When engaging the EA, you declare that 'Sally Smith' has already approached you personally and expressed a keen interest in buying. Then, if the EA finds another buyer offering a better price or preferable circumstances, you can go with them and pay their commission; if however, you end up choosing to sell to Sally anyway, you don't need to pay the EA anything, as they weren't the ones to introduce Sally to you as a buyer.

Italics fail!

I have had friends who have done this and ended up with the home they had been dreaming of.{smile}

Sorry

My aunt (who lived on her own for a long time before her dementia got too bad) got an increasing number of these in her final years and they amplified her paranoia about her house being burgled. She found them really distressing. The handwritten, personalised ones more than the professionally printed estate agent ones.

When she died we found that she'd kept a bunch of them in a folder with a note telling us that if these people were that desperate for her house we could sell it to them but only once she was in the ground and for 20% above the asking price.

I can well see why a lot of elderly and/or vulnerable folk could find it intrusive - and not just those with MH issues or other conditions. Just the idea that somebody has been deliberately watching and has their eye on your property (and by extension, maybe you) can seem kind of stalky, in spite of the fact that it probably comes from a point of a very casual 'just in case you're ever considering' about a house that can very easily and normally be seen from the public road.

I'm not at that point myself yet, so this is only my own conjecture, but I think those of us in our 20s-60s who are fortunate enough to own our own homes mostly probably take it for granted that they're our own homes for as long as we want.

However, I think a lot of older folk are more aware of their own mortality, of the possibility of needing to go into a care facility, of their worsening health/fitness, reducing in strength, multiple vulnerabilities that come with age. Most of them are fully at peace with the fact that they won't live forever and that, when they are no longer around, their home will become somebody else's, one way or another; but until that time, their home is a large part of their security and a constant of their lives - much more so than for younger people.

They have heard stories of GPs who write off and ignore old people and their concerns; could have fears about being shoved off into a home unnecessarily, just because they are old; worries that, as they advance in years, their children and grandchildren are mentally 'pricing them up' and eager to get their hands on an inheritance.

As I say, this is just my conjecture, and I'm by no means suggesting for all (or maybe even the majority) of older people; but I do think there are mindsets and concerns that many will have in later life, which may never ever remotely occur to those of us who are still a good way from that point yet.