Offer accepted on new property before we even put our house on market! Help!

[LlamaGiles]

DP and I are upsizing, but we live in an area like lots at the moment where properties are supposedly being snapped up straight away and then sellers are being left with nowhere to move onto. With this in mind we held off putting our property on the market, this wasn't supposed to be for a long time, just while we narrowed down our search a bit and got a better idea of what we would be looking for.

Anyway we happened to see a house we loved, it's been on the market longer than most (but not ages) as it's on a main road and needs a bit of work, neither of which we mind. We were surprised when we were allowed to view without even having ours on the market, then view again, then offer...and now they have accepted!!

I'm amazed we've been able to get in to this position and now I'm panicking a bit that if we don't get going quickly enough it will fall through. We are serious about buying this house and will get ours on the market pronto. Has anyone been in this situation and did it work out in the end? I've never heard of anyone doing it this way round before.

Depending on what your local housing market is like, I’m sure you’ll be fine. Houses seem to be selling quite quickly.

I've done this and we lost the house as they wouldn't wait. That was 2 years ago. In this market, I can't believe they've accepted an offer from someone who is not proceedable but get yours on the market asap. Fingers crossed for you.

Yes, my house sold before the end of the week, it was immaculate though.
A lot of the time estate agents will have people in mind already.

You'll have to get yours on and see! Bridging loans are available for £££ if you can't line up the completions.

I viewed a house Tuesday morning, saw the same estate agents as was selling it tuesday afternoon and explained we wanted to sell our house to buy that house, and only that house. They came and took the photos on the Wednesday and put them straight on their Facebook page, we had three viewings on the Thursday with a cash offer 5k over the asking price and had the asking price accepted on the one we wanted to buy on the Thursday afternoon. We moved in 4 weeks and 2 days later.

The only thing we had to accept was, because we had to make it clear to the agents how much we wanted the house, we were never going to get a low offer accepted. Luckily they didn't play silly buggers and try to extort more out of us! I think the fact our buyers were cash buyers made us more appealling to them. They were going into rented anyway so it was just the three of us in the chain.

@ArosGartref I know, we only really put in an offer so that they knew we were interested. What I thought would happen is that they'd come back and say "thanks but you need to at least have yours on the market/have a proceedable offer", then we'd get ours on the market and go from there. We are stunned! Really hoping we can get going fast enough for them.

@Desmondo2021 wow that is the absolute dream!!

This has happened quickly for us, we only started looking about 3 weeks ago and it was supposed to be a sort of nosey around various areas, but this house ticks all our boxes and is just what we want, in an area we love. We are contacting the estate agents tomorrow and going from there, I have a frantic week ahead of me!

Put yours on with the same estate agent as that will help smooth things along.

My in laws ended up in a similar situation and offered a cash deposit (£1000) to the vendors to show they were serious. The vendors said no but suggested they commission their survey instead to give them "skin in the game". If you get a sense they might be nervy you could always offer to get the survey booked in? Also is one less thing to do.

One thing, has the place you’ve offered on been taken off the market? Quite a few people will be prepared to accept an offer but if other people are viewing there is a chance you’ll be gazumped (remember nothing is binding until exchange). Either way I would get yours sold ASAP and make sure the one you’re buying is off the market.

@Heronwatcher no, and I won't be asking for that at this stage, I feel like it would be taking the piss a bit to be honest, at least I think that's what I'd feel as a seller. We're just going to get ours on the market hopefully within days and go from there, I might feel able to ask once ours is at least on the market! just praying no one else comes in with a better offer.

@Andthenanothercupoftea that's a good idea about the survey, I think we might do that, it's not such a huge financial hit if it falls through.

3 years ago we went on the market and sold within a week. It was a bit of a shock: from thinking about moving, to calling the estate agent, to having 14 viewings and accepting an offer of the asking price, it was 10 days!

Hi OP, why don't you ask the selling agent to get yours on their books ASAP as a "coming soon". Agent can advertise the basic details, and hopefully get viewings lined up for say, end of next week, while you do any prep over the next few days.

I did this. Worked fine: so long as the house you’re selling is priced right and not got any really difficult factors.
Do your vendors have a preferred timeline? If they’re looking to move super quickly that might be more tricky: ours weren’t in a rush and we agreed a target date with them from the outset.

This is exactly the position we hope to be in at some point. There are very few suitable properties coming on, we would sell within a week, therefore we'd be homeless with 2 children and one on the way...

There's no doubt it puts you in a vulnerable position - we have to make sure the sellers know we are desperate for THAT house, have to make sure any offer is generous, and then run the risk that somehow our own property doesn't sell.

It's not ideal but I'd rather do it this way than end up having sold with nowhere to go to.

I did it this way round last time I bought, but the market was not very fast moving where we’re were buying. We offered, it was accepted, we put our house (in a different area) up within a week and it sold after about 4 weeks. It was only the second time I had bought and I didn’t really know it wasn’t the “done thing”. All worked out ok though.

We done this last week in this crazy market, viewed a house that came back on with our agent, made an offer over home report value and we hadn't sold yet (but the EA knew there were 2nd viewings booked) offer accepted. We had been on the market for 3 days only, so I was nervous. 2 days later we got an offer 10k above our home report value! All good. If your EA is running both properties it can work out.

As a seller who had an investor 'cash buyer' has messed me about for months, I would only be glad to let someone view who was seriously interested in this particular house and who would be ready to go on the market ASAP - if of course their house was not an obviously difficult sell!

The only disadavantage to a seller who had no good offers so far (as you say it's been on the market for a while), is that you might sell to someone in a chain. So it does limit your options to no chain buyers for yours. Unless the seller specified they are in no rush.

Obviously their house hasn't sold fast, posibly due to being on the main road, so of course they aer keen on someone who's serious!

This happened to us last year (the house was taken off the market though, because I insisted! Our house was on the market in a fortnight and sold in another ten days. It was extremely hectic but all worked perfectly.

We sold ours to the son of the first estate agent who looked at it, didn’t even go on market. Got 3 other quotes as the first estate agent who looked at it said would be unethical to quote. He paid. The middle one as we’d saved on fees.

Have your vendors found anywhere to buy?

Commissioning the survey is enough commitment to ask them to take it off the market.

Have the EAs sent you a Memorandum of Sale?

We did this. It was exactly the same situation, down to the main road! I was honest with the estate agent, and ask him to come and value our house ASAP. He is a small local company which I liked, but having the same ea buying and selling is a huge bonus when it comes to communication. He was brilliant and we moved in 10 weeks later, (we were busting a gut for the first stamp duty deadline, which turned out to be less important in the end!)

Did this - working well so far- put your house on with same agent as seller so they have the motivation to really sell yours so get commission from both the sales!

I did this, our house was due to 'go live' on the Thursday but the house we bought came up for sale on the Friday before. We viewed on Saturday, made a (very cheeky!) offer on Monday which was accepted but only if we sold within 2 weeks. We had 15 viewings by Saturday morning and sold the following Monday.

Good luck. We bought our current house - admittedly years go and in a very different market - at a point where we hadn't intended to start looking. I was heavily pregnant with our second child and we saw a for sale sign while out on a walk. Checked and it was the top end of our tentative budget; we'd been thinking of waiting 6 months then starting to look around.

Where we were hugely lucky, was that we had a deposit without selling our first house, and with a bit of fiddling our bank was able to make the numbers work so we bought the house, repainted and moved in slowly, then sold a couple of months later. Would have been harder nowadays.