Letter to property owners whose houses are not on the market?

[ProjectGainsborough]

I want to buy in a particular village, where the DC go to school, but there is NOTHING on the market. Our ducks are all in a row and we are renting nearby, waiting to pounce.

I was thinking of perhaps putting a polite letter through the door of some likely properties to see if anyone was thinking of selling. Is this mental? Has anyone done this and if so, what did you say?

yes maybe a bit mean. If someone said that to me, I'd be up all night worrying about the sodding lay-lines.

TBH, all the decent stuff goes for asking/over asking anyway. The houses that hang around tend to have an obvious problem or be insanely, exorbitantly overpriced. Even so, a bloody two-bed on the main road with no parking went for over the top of our budget recently

I would go by the Zoopla estimate, or thereabouts, if I ever get to the point of offering and explain my justification. Does that sound reasonable?

I can't see why anyone would mind a polite leaflet and you might just tempt someone who has selling at the back of their mind but can't quite be bothered to go through the whole performance of finding a good agent and marketing their home.

I'd also second keeping it simple.

'I hope you don't mind the direct and personal approach. We're a family of four who are renting a house while we look for our long term home. The children are at X school and Y village is an area we're really interested in.

We're genuine people, not timewasters, so if you may consider selling your property either now or in the fairly near future, or if you know someone else nearby who might, we can be reached at email or phone ...... Thanks for reading'

I hope you find something.

I like Enrique's wording.
Also I don't think you can go by zoopla unless it is actual recent sold prices rather than estimates. Their estimates can be pretty woolly IMO.
If you are set on that village I would gather a set of comparable sold prices of your own.

Hand write it though so you don't look like an agent, and do leave both a mobile number (to prove you are a real person!) and an email (because no-one really wants to cold call someone). Wording above looks great.

Thanks all. I love MN

We get a few a year. The most recent one had our address handwritten on the envelope which I thought was a good idea as made it look less like an agency. We get a lot if junk mail inc an estate agent letter weekly

It's a real life Kirsty & Phil story!

This is exactly how my next door neighbours got their house. Actually the house had been on the market a few months previously but there hadn't been much interest. So my old neighbours were delighted!