Selling in London, buying out of London

[PassTheCremeEggs]

Struggling to get to grips with what happens when in a selling/buying situation. We have a flat to sell in a fairly buoyant area of London where flats like ours can sell quickly.

We want to buy out of London, in a quite specific area. We have seen one house we're keen on and have offered, awaiting response. But, if we don't get this house, there is nothing else in the area we're interested in at the moment.

Our flat is not yet on the market however. My question is - should we start marketing it now, even though we don't actually want to sell unless we can buy the specific house we've seen? What happens if we market the flat, get it under offer and then the house purchase doesn't go ahead?

The reason I ask is that we have tenants in our flat who we'll have to give notice to - I don't want to do this unless we have an offer accepted on the house we want to buy because well then be tenant-less and wouldn't want to tie back in to six months plus of new tenants (our current tenants are on, by their own choice, a rolling two month notice).

Can't get my head around what we should be doing first, any ideas?

We are buying in a village where not many houses come up and the competition is quite had although not as crazy as in London.
We were told by EA's that no vendor will take our offer seriously if we don't have an offer on our house and a mortgage agreement in principle.

We met with an EA who took photos of our place, measured and wrote the description and got it ready to put on the market. When we asked her to put in on the market, it took 10 minutes. We had an offer 20 hours later, which we accepted.

It's hard to know how to do it best, but general consensus is, you need to be proceedable to get your offer accepted.

Thanks duende. I thought that would be the case, as much as I didn't want to hear it!

We had an offer accepted out of London before our house went on the market, it depends on demand where you are buying and the seller. We then put our house on, which sold over asking in a week. This was in 2014. I think we paid slightly over what the new house should have been, but it worked for us, as we did so well in London and this is potentially our forever home. I think having tenants to consider is going to slow you down more than anything else.

Duende is right. Your offer is unlikely to be accepted unless you can proceed with the sale.
Can you sell your flat as a rental investment with tenants in situ?

We had the same. We found a house we liked but lost out because our property was not under offer.
We put our house on the market and it sold within two days but our EA explained to the buyer that they would have to wait for us to find a property. Our buyer really wanted our house so was more than happy to wait.
There was absolutely nothing on the market where we wanted to buy but last week a house came on and we fell in love with it. As we are in such a good position with our house under offer we had our offer accepted! A good EA will really help you out in this situation!

I agree with the others - if you are looking at desirable places out of London where people stay for the duration of their children's education and beyond in their "forever home" properties literally come on the market every 15 years, and many get sold privately within the local community (see evidence of this on "sold" house prices on Rightmove) - so you do need to be proceedable. EA have a waiting list of proceedable applicants who call well before a property hits Rightmove - you need to be on this list. You should also consider leafleting, networking etc if your area and needs are very specific.

We want to move in 2 years time and I have done some research on the area we want to move to - and have seen that 2 houses a year come on in total - may not be what we want and many are sold before hitting the market. So we know that we have to be proceedable, in the community network (will probably rent) and very patient!!!

I'm doing this at the moment and selling in London was a totally different experience to everything that you get told about selling in London. Mine was slow and very few viewers/low interest on Right Move. I offered on a house where I'm hoping to move to, expecting to sell quickly, and had a nervous month or so waiting for an offer on my flat. (I accepted an offer about 7 weeks after it went on the market for less than I really wanted/expected).

Check out your exact area on Right Move and see what's sold and how long it's been on the market for. Look at the ones that are hanging around and see if you can tell why (bad layout/busy road etc) and look at the ones that have sold quickly (cheaper/new kitchen etc) and then compare yours to these.

If you get the offer accepted subject to you selling (which is what I had), then I'd put yours on the market at the lower end of what you'd like/a sensible price. This will get more people in and help it to sell more quickly. Look at what things have actually sold for, not what they're on for (unless you're in an area that frequently sells for over asking).

Re the tenants, conveyancing can take 2 months so as long as you give them notice when you accept the offer and inform the buyer that there is this timescale, I don't think this is an issue. You might be able to sell with sitting tenants as well if the buyer is a buy to let purchaser?

You have to have an offer on your own property first otherwise you will just be disappointed and won't be taken seriously. Remember too that if you can deliver a complete chain your bargaining power vis a vis offers on the property you are buying will be taken much more seriously.

Thank you everyone, this is all really helpful. I'd rather sell, bank the money and rent if needed in the area, but we're fixed into our mortgage for another 8 months so can't do this without paying an ERC which is prohibitively expensive (so we're looking to port the mortgage which means completing on both on the same day.) We might just have to sit it out until the fix ends, then we'll have a bit more flexibility. So many pieces of the puzzle to try and fit together.

Double check your deal - I can port mine as long as I complete within 90 days. You have to pay it initially but you get it back when you complete on your purchase. Also check that you aren't let off it in the last 3-6 months (I think this might be as long as you still stay with the same bank).

These both apply to mine with Santander.

I will definitely check that out - thanks helloitsme

As others have hinted, whether you'll get an offer accepted without being on the market depends on the vendors situation but for most it's unlikely. From the sounds of it we're currently in a similar situation to where Helloitsme was. We've had an offer accepted on a place that had been on the market for a while and they're giving us time to get ours sold. We didn't expect to get in that situation. We too thought we'd sell quickly (Blackheath, where things tend to) but it's taking a little longer than we'd hoped. Like others have said it can vary quite a lot by property type and exact location so see if you can find some similar properties and ask the agents how long they took to get under offer. If they think they have a chance of selling yours they'll probably be willing to divulge quite a lot.