Possibly stupid question about buying/selling houses.....

[BuyingHouses]

My Mum is looking to move to another area. She has lived in the same house for about 40 years, and I have never bought a house whilst having to sell another house (have bought two houses but was in rented accommodation both times), so we are new to all this.

She has had her own house valued and is ready to put it on the market, but some vendors of houses she is looking at will not allow her to view without having accepted an offer on her own house. How is this supposed to work? Is she supposed to put her own house up for sale, accept an offer, and THEN start viewing houses to buy? This seems really unfair on the people buying her house - what if it takes her ages to find somewhere she likes enough to put an offer in on? And yet I get why vendors only want offers from buyers who are ready to proceed. Does she just tell prospective buyers her situation so that they know they may have to wait?

What is the done thing here please/what are your experiences? TIA.

Generally you put your house on the market then start to view properties but estate agents won't put forward your offer until you have an offer on yours.

It's I think to stop time wasters spreading covid

That would be my thought too. There are usually a lot of timewasters and sight see-ers. You don't them traipsing around your home at the moment.

We have just been through the same process. It took ages to get an acceptable offer on our house but meanwhile we found a house we really wanted to buy. We viewed it twice but couldn’t offer as we hadn’t received an offer - very frustrating! We did tell the vendor we were really interested though and luckily the house was still available when we got an offer on ours. Such a stressful process but has to be done.

So general consensus is to get Mum’s house on the market ASAP! I’ll go over tomorrow to help her get it photo-ready. It still needs decluttering, but I think we’ll go with hiding stuff in cupboards/loft and giving it a deep clean

Not much useful to add but just to let you know we are in a similar position. No one wants our house though as it's about as bit as a shoe box - guttering as the one place that let us view without being sold was perfect, we put down an offer but was then gazumped by someone who had already sold. So now we feel totally stuck with a house we (and everyone else) hate(s)! 😭

Tip for photos - try taking a photo yourself and looking at it. I found that clutter etc "jumped out" at me from a photo whereas I didn't see it when I was just standing in the room. Sounds silly but really helped me prep our small flat for sale.