Advice on buying house from landlord

[justinpatch]

Hello there our landlord recently had the house we are living in valued for re-mortgaging purposes. We at this point mentioned that we would be interested in buying the house if ever they wanted to sell.
The landlord is interested in selling and has asked us to make an offer.
Has anyone else been in this situation and can share their experience?
First things first, we need to value the property through estate agents.
Can we do that as tenants? Feels unethical!
Thanks for all tips and advice!

You could look at sold prices on Rightmove to gauge what neighbouring properties are selling for? That's usually the best way to judge what it could sell for on the open market.
You could then account for the cost of any work that you know needs doing, knock off a little bit extra (say, then equivalent of 6 months rent?) based on the property not sitting empty during the sale process, and put in an offer based on that?

You can pay for a basic independent valuation - effectively the same kind of valuation that a bank does for mortgage purposes. That way you don't get estate agents inflation which is done as an ego massage.

My tenants just bought my flat. I had 4 estate agents value it, at this point it was not clear if my tenants would be able to raise enough to buy it, so fair dos I think.

They made me a low ball offer, which I rejected. I went back to them with a counter offer which they accepted and off we went. The offer was in the middle of the range of valuations.

One thing, with no agents involved, both parties have to keep on top of their solicitors, and make sure that anything agreed in person is made known to the solicitors.