Letter through the door...

[NEmum]

We live in a very popular village where houses of a particular size (family home) rarely come onto the market. As we've outgrown our current home we now need one of these homes!

We've tried the usual route, word of mouth, letter drops by EA & putting ours on the market with the intention of going into rental. We decided against this option as the e aren't even any rental properties in the area which we'd consider.

So I feel our last resort is to post personal letters to houses on the streets which we'd consider. Emphasising that we are serious buyers but without an immediate need to move & dealing with us direct would save them money (potentially 5k). Has anyone ever done this? Any success or failure stories you can share so we can consider it further??

We did it and it worked!

I have had letters thru my door loads - and would respond if we were planning to move. Just do it! Many houses where I live are sold privately.

Worth a try - we did it this summer - 3 houses got in touch and we ended up buying one of them. We had accepted an offer on our house already and there was nothing on the market so thought why not.

We did this also with great success, however bare in mind if the roads are popular they may have already received a stack of letters.

We posted a letter through one house who replied stating they had received another 47 letters of enquiry and were open to accepting offers of £300k over market value! No thanks.

Thanks everyone! Just got to convince my husband on this now. I figure we have nothing to lose! But great to hear of some success stories out there

I think that this is a much better approach than word of mouth - not sure how that would actually work ? I would nt tell any of my neighbours or a local shop keeper that I might move....

Dont expect to get a bargain necessarily (tho I hope you do) - if you are in a v desirable area and little on the market the buyer can name their price. one of my neighbours has just moved - hadnt planned to but it was an offer he could nt refuse.

@another20 absolutely would not expect a bargain, would expect to pay the valuation price in full to be honest!

We live in a village where everyone knows the housing situation so word of mouth has helped others move in a similar situation. I have told everyone who is interested, including our neighbours & a shop keeper 😂

Word of mouth definitely does work, it's amazing how many properties in our area never hit the market but rather changed hands amongst the church going faithful.

I posted a lot of letters in our village through letterboxes and got several replies but most wanted to move in a year or so. I also put the same type of 'letter' on the local nextdoor website. We've now exchanged but the house we are buying was never advertised (done discreetly through one EA, so not on their website, Rightmove etc) so really push the EAs in your location and call them weekly!