Would you sell or find a house firs?

[Lucy61]

Just that really. We are getting our house ready for sale. We are first time sellers so I'm not sure what the usual sequence of events is.
We will be buying in a more expensive area and our budget will depend on how much we sell our current home for. I'd hate to find a place only to realise that we can't afford it. Also would sellers take us seriously if we have yet to sell ?
At the same time, I'm worried that if we wait till we have sold, we'd have to find a new home in a bit of a rush.
All advice/ experience appreciated.

*first

The process is normally to put yours on the market, then start looking and, hopefully, it will all come together around the same time (ha!). If you're arranging viewings of other properties estate agents won't take you seriously unless you're on the market.

Depends on where you're buying, really. In London, 2 or 3 months ago sellers wouldn't even accept an offer if your house wasn't already sold... I think you can probably do both things together, start getting the process of selling your house started, and start looking for a place to buy!

Put yours in the market (which will inform how much you expect to get- interview 3 different EAs). Simultaneously start looking, get on all the EA lists etc.

No-one will take an offer form your seriously unless your own house is under offer, but sometimes, if the EA of your house and the house you like are with the same EA they seem to make sure our house sells extra fast if they know you are interested in one of 'their' properties.

Similarly, if you get an offer, suddenly the will start to introduce you to all sorts of properties that haven't had their photos done yet, etc.

Bu7t if you start looking no, you are in a good position to go back for a second look at anything you like as soon as yours is under offer.

Saves time.

You'll be hard presses to find a seller who will accept offers from you until you have an offer. Personally when we were selling I didn't accept viewings from any body who wasn't able to make an offer ( so under offer themselves, or cash buyers) as it was a waste of time and briefed our agent to this effect.

Albeit we did have a lot of viewings on our place with few offers as it looked amazing in the photos but was very small so had a lot of people who loved if but couldn't cope with the size.

I'd put your house on and do some viewings of properties you'd like but until you have an offer you may struggle to actually get any offers on purchases considered.

Thanks everyone. I suspected as much. Tbh I wouldn't entertain someone who hadn't put their house on the market either.

A variation on this - a few years ago when we were looking we did lots of research and arranged to view five houses on one day. Of those five three of the vendors told us the EA had advised them not to find somewhere themselves until they had real interest in their own house.

We thought that was crackers - these people hadn't even viewed anywhere themselves - we were chain free and needed to move because of commuting to work. The two houses we preferred were the two where the vendors were actively looking to move.

We put ours in the market,then looked at houses, so we had it down to a short list of three by the time we sold ours. The day after we got an offer on ours I did second viewings on those and out in an offer on the one we wanted.

BUT we were buying and selling outside London (albeit in very different locations) where houses were/are on the market for many months/years so this was possible.

Like everyone has said - depends where you live. With our current house, we viewed when my house had sold but DH's hadn't.

We knew we desperately wanted the house, used the same agent to put DH's house on the market and so they had incentive to sell both DH's as it would also generate the sale of the house we viewed. We managed to do it all in time, no probs.

Today i'm just pondering whether to telephone an EA to view a house that came on the market yesterday, whilst our house is currently not on the market at all (wasn't even really looking to sell).

It can work, but depends where you live (we're Wiltshire, so house market no-where near as bouyant as london!). Also you risk losing a house if you can't sell your own. But then again, i've had friends who are under offer, put an offer in on another house, their house sale has fallen through and so they're back to square 1.

Yes we had a good amount of offers and completely disregarded people not on the market or not under offer. Even if they were putting in a good offer. But we are in London. Also we didn't make any offers/viewings until a few days before our open day. We knew we would be under offer in a few days so the EA were happy to line up viewings. Where are you OP?

We are in the NW and disregarded people who hadn't sold theirs yet. We weren't allowed to view a few until we were SSTC.

We are not in London but in the south east where things are moving quite quickly. I can see your point, Wow. If a prospective buyer asks then I'll instruct the estate agent to say we've seen a few places but were not in a position to offer until we found a buyer for our home... Won't mention that by 'looking' we mean rightmove.

We most probably will go down the open house root too. Hope we won't have to keep the house immaculate for long, not easy with a 2 yr old.

Just wish it wasn't a World Cup year... Don't think it'll be a good time to sell.

we viewed our now current home, then put ours on the market and it sold v quickly.
then we viewed again and put the offer in.
perhaps not the most traditional way of doing it, but we wanted this house specifically.
so I wouldn't discount people who are in the same position as we were personally. You never know.