We have lived in our house for 11 years, oldest child now 8 (kids share a room) and we have said for a while we'd move 'around 2022' in order to get more space and garden. Def no immediate urgency.
Bought this house without selling my first house and when I bought that one I was a FTB so no real experience of the whole chain thing.
Although we've been looking on rightmove etc for quite a while, a couple of weeks ago as a first step I had an agent round to value the house. All good and he happened to mention a house that was about to go on the market literally around the corner. Quickly became clear that that was our Dream House, albeit at the very top of our budget. They wouldn't let us view without us making it clear we were ready to sell so round they came to take photos, sign up etc. We made an offer for the Dream House and it was rejected, as another person apparently had no chain. Agent suggested that if anything happened with that sale we would get first refusal (I believe our offer was actually higher than the person they went with).
So lesson learnt we need to get our ducks in a row in case either Dream House comes back on the market or we find Dream House no 2. This feels extremely unlikely atm because in discussing Dream House we realised that we really don't want to move to the other side of town or the next town along which we previously considered . We want to broadly stay put within walking distance of primary school, friends and the big local park so that is going to massively limit our options. There is very little out there atm certainly nothing that warrants an official viewing.
So house is now on the market and we already have 7 potential buyers lined up to view next week. Have said to agent that we are very unlikely to be able to move quickly so any buyers need to understand that. I won't contemplate moving into rented to break the chain. So it feels almost like a catch 22 situation here.
We can't put in an offer on Dream House no 2/3/4 unless our own house is on the market, and ideally we have a buyer in place
But
Nobody is going to want to put an offer on our house if they understand that we don't have a house to buy and that we are very fussy???
I absolutely do NOT want to be talked into buying a house in the wrong area just to get this one sold. Husband and I are broadly in agreement on the type of house and area we want however his argument is that Dream House no 2 could come on the market next week/month. While that is true I think it could be easily several months until another Dream House comes up. And even then we might not get it.
What am I missing here. Do people really put offers on houses when the sellers really don't have anything to move to, with no time pressures at all? I'd be more than happy to accept an offer on the basis that we will be ready to move 'sometime in 2022'. But am I being wildly unrealistic? Given the lack of houses on the market (we are NW and it seems that there are lots of buyers around but hardly any houses) if you want to sell your house these days do you have to be prepared to compromise on the house you want to move to in order to get it shifted?