House buying etiquette - is it wrong to start viewing houses before your own is even on the market?

[Tinker]

We have to move but house not ready to be put up for sale yet. But keep seeing houses that look interesting. Partly out of nosiness, want to view them. Wrong? Should we just wait a while?

We had someone round today that can't put their house on the market for 6 months! We let them view, but just thought they were wasting everbodys time, hopefully our house will be sold in 6 months, but who knows.

Personally I don't think there is an awful lot of point going to see houses until you have sold your own as it is really annoying when you find a really nice house but can't progress.

Also bear in mind that if your house isn't on the market, then you will be way down on the seller's choice of people to sell too. Whilst the pmarket is slow this isn't so much of a problem, but as the spring arrives the market is more likely to pick up again.

Family 1 -ready to proceed, lower than asking price offer
Family 2 - house not yet for sale, above asking price offer

Many sellers will still go with Family 2.

Opps, meant family 1 - the one ready to proceed straight away.

Better to wait til you've had an offer

My experience is that when you call the agents to arrange a viewing, the agents will ask you what your situation is with your own house. I have agents tell me that unless my own house is on the market, some sellers will not be prepared to show. Depends on how hot the market in that area is. I know in my area, the sensibly priced family houses (which only come up occasionally) get snapped up even before the ads come out by buyers that have already got offers on their homes or are renting in the wings. The agents prioritise those buyers.

I fell in love with house(s), only to put mine on the market and then lose them because I could not act fast enough. My strategy now is not to look at houses until I have mine on the market and ideally an offer on it - to avoid being disappointed.

I suppose that only works if you are familiar with the area you want to buy in. If you are moving into a new area, you might have to do more research first ie view before putting your house on the market. It happens, sellers know that and if they are particular, can always stipulate to their agent that they won't show. Good luck!

I think it depends on what your existing place is?. We looked at our leisure for our new house as we were very specific what we wanted, a particular area of a particular town, large garden etc. It took us a year to find the house we wanted. But we then found a buyer for our flat in London in 10 days, we knew that we would find a buyer very quickly as we were selling a ground floor conversion with share of freehold 5 min walk to tube zone3 & 5 min walk to train and our local estate agents had a waiting list of people to see any 2 bed flat in our area. It was difficult to convince the new area estate agents of this though!

Thanks for more posts. House we spotted that liked look of has had an offer on it now so agree, probably best to wait and avoid disappointment.

In NZ they have open homes - and interested buyers and tire kickers can go through the house (with agent there) for around 1/2 hour at the weekend. We bought our house without ours being on the market, and you could write in the contract that it was subject to selling ours within a certain time frame - we had 2 working weeks. As you can see - very different here.