Making an offer when we're not ready to sell...

[Andthenanothercupoftea]

I'm looking for a bit of advice - essentially whether I'll be laughed out of the room for doing this!

We're looking to move in next few months but our house isn't read to sell yet. We've got some remedial works to be done following an insurance claim. It's been delayed due to covid and just general slow moving wheels of insurance.

I did the foolish thing of looking on right move and have found a great property in a nice location at the right price. A bit more digging and I've found that it's actually been on the market for a year and had the price dropped by more than 10% in that time and is on the third estate agent.

We would be in a position to put in at the current asking price. But we're probably not going to be able to got to market until April at the earliest.

Need to view the house first, but if I were to contact the estate agent and ask if the sellers would be willing to take it off the market for 6(?) months if we offered at the asking price - would that be reasonable? The reason for the lack of sale may come through on viewing or with the searches/survey I guess...

From the looks of it the house is empty at the moment and it's possibly even a probate sale.

If you don't ask, you don't get, I guess... just be honest. If it's probate there won't be any time pressure from a chain.

I don't think your really in a position to ask them to take it off the market to be honest. What if yours doesn't sell? Or it does sell and it takes months and months? Or your sale all falls through. If I was selling I wouldn't be willing to hold out at this point unless like you say you got very lucky with the circumstances around the sale

You would be better off getting your own house sorted out and on the market first. Particularly during covid they probably wont be too keen to show the property to someone who isnt even on the market yet.

However when we moved in 2019 we hadnt got our house on the market and werent planning to move for another two years but i was keeping an eye on rightmove as we were moving 3 hours away and wanted to be clued up about what we could get for our money and saw my dream house ! We viewed, fell in love, put our house on the market and moved 6 months later! BUT although i let the agent know we wanted it we didnt offer until we had a first time buyer on ours so it was still being shown - i wouldnt expect them to take it off the market in this situation.

They won't take it off the market. We were made offers by 2 different people who were both waiting for their house to sell. The estate agent advised we could accept their offer but the house should stay on the market until the 2 offers were in proceed able positions. We then got a 3rd chain free offer so went with that one. There's no benefit to them taking it off the market for you.

At the moment a lot of agents won't let you view unless you can progress ie: you already have an offer on your house. We came across this several times when we were viewing as we had two to sell but were marketing them one after the other.
It took 8mths to sell the first house and we're 6mths in to selling the second with no end in sight. Asking them to take it off the market for 6mths might not be long enough anyway.
There's no benefit to them if they take it off the market so I wouldn't even bother asking if I were you. They'll probably just think you're just a CF.

As a seller I would insist on a (non-refundable ) deposit to agree to this. Perhaps £5k to hold the house for you for 6 months.

Thanks everyone. That's kind of what I thought. We'll wait it out I think, and try to hurry along the insurance company and get everything ready to go - the remedial work includes a full repaint of our living room and bedroom which is a bonus!

If it’s been in the market for a year, either it’s not as good as it sounds on paper (therefore overpriced), or it’s pretty niche, surely?

Could you ask to go see it, as otherwise it’ll haunt you as ”the one that got away”. It could be that it’ll wait until April.

We did this as a buyer, and the seller accepted.
We found a house we wanted to buy, it had been on over a year. We let the seller know that we were 2-3 months off our house being in a re-mortgageable condition (different situation, we were doing up a house to let as we were in rented). The seller agreed as they hadn't found anywhere yet. It took her about 2 months for her to find somewhere anyway.

If it's a probate sale, do you know whether probate has been granted? It's not impossible that they might not yet be ready to sell.

I'd contact the agent in the first instance and try to arrange a viewing. I've fallen in love with houses only to see this unsuitable they were for practical purposes.

Good luck.