How on earth are you supposed to view houses at the moment if you have a full time job?

[EnglishGirlApproximately]

Aarghh. Not expecting any real answers just venting. We're trying to buy a house. We have a good deposit and we aren't in a chain, mortgage agreement in principle. The market is moving so fast that houses are selling within hours of being marketed. I've called to make appointments for two ideal properties this week within an hour of them being marketed and both sold before we could view late in the afternoon. Who are all the people that can view immediately and what the heck do you do if you have a job? Been looking for 4 months and can't even manage to get as far as viewing most of the time!

Same with us, we can’t book in to view even though we’re working from home. Could you offer on one before viewing and just pull out after viewing? I know that’s not great for the sellers

You need to get in with agents a bit more I think, if you can. When we were house hunting last year agents would e-mail/ call us to arrange a viewing before the details went online. (We had been looking a while so we knew them all well, and we also weren't in a chain). The only downside was this meant we viewed a number of houses I wouldn't have bothered with had I seen the details beforehand.

I think I need to do the rounds of calling local agents again as clearly being able to view within 24 hours of a property going on sale isn't quick enough!

@Britneyb I'd rather not bit if it comes to that I guess we'd have no choice but to start going down that road

You absolutely need to get in good terms with the local agents and nicely pester them to let you know about properties coming up. My parents have just sold their house, they had 2 viewings booked in before any ads/photos went up online, even on the agents own site, because the agents had contacted people on their books.

As with previous posters - what does help is not just being on an EA list - phone them regularly and say - this is what I want . Get to know them by name. & make sure they recognise you . It helps if they know you are a committed buyer so they may phone you when something comes up even as they are preparing the details.

Gosh I hate these estate agents and love them at the same time.

Its just pure laziness.

Our agent did nearly 50 viewings on our house starting the hour it hit online to 4 days later choc a block. He got us an excellent price on our house, cash buyer, flexible to wait etc. on day 3.

The agents we bought our current house off did 7 viewings done and dusted. Thats it. No one could get a look in and thank god for that. When our agent came to see the house he was just mouth open! He could not believe the price we got it for. He thinks he would of got 100-150k+.

We have had an offer accepted on ours and we done most of the viewings ourselves (we have a big dog, easier for us to manage the showings)
We had viewings at 7.30pm. Can the vendor not do them themselves

To be honest, when we bought our house about 6 years ago it was like this in our area. Houses gone before they'd even shown up online. Finally we did a whole day of viewing ANYTHING and luckily during that day the EA got a call to say a property was coming up and offered to take us to see it....we did, offered immediately and they accepted. All before it appeared online for the first time. It's madness.

This is us.
Thankfully im on maternity leave so can do all the admin - but still want my husband there for viewings (he works full time).

we want to move to the next town up - 30 mins away, so it's difficult to drive up on a whim, and want to get a couple of viewings in a day so it's not a short trip

Thanks all it looks like we need to be calling around agents even more often and see if that makes a difference, but even if we get a heads up we still can't change the fact that we might not be able to view instantly. Very disheartening really. We have above average incomes, stable jobs, no debt and are looking well under what we could buy on our income but we are still struggling because we have full time jobs!

I have seen it like this before (in earlier boom times for property). It always calms down eventually but that is no comfort when you are in the middle of a situation like this. When my son was looking at the end of last year I went to the viewings for him and could go right away as I work from home. Things were just getting snapped up - he ended up with one not as good as the one I wanted but that better one went for over asking price and outside his budget so never mind.

He exchanged contracts in 17 days of instructing his solicitor by the way - his solicitor's record (for speed) over the last 17 years and completed in January.

Absolute madness people offering after only a single viewing. Fools and money...

It will calm down OP don't worry

@xenia I work from home three days a week and I'd hoped that would help but alas I'm still being beaten to it! It has to calm down eventually but I'm really impatient and struggle with estate agent nonsense so it isn't a good combination