How to land an off market viewing?

[StuckInARug]

We have been house hunting in SE London for about 6 months. There was one specific house which was on the market before we were ready to buy, we put a note through their door, never heard back. 3 months later we saw it come up on rightmove, called the estate agent immediately, only to be told the house was sold 2 days prior on an off market viewing - they had forgotten to cancel the rightmove ad. We had specifically asked that estate agent to let us know if that house ever came back on the market 😭

My question is, how do we make sure we hear about houses about to come on sale so we have the opportunity to view them as soon as possible?? We’re on every estate agent’s mailing list but we’ve never been called about any properties!

It’s often those who have an offer on their own houses through that EA, so the EA knows they’re proceedable, they’re top of mind, and they’re keen to get things moving for their own benefit.

Other than that, you need persistence. They will have Livy forgotten one bit of contact three months ago. If you’re (gently) in touch regularly with a reminder of exactly what you’re after and what a good position you’re in (hopefully you are), you’ll be higher up the list.

Well for a start they haven’t forgotten to cancel the rightmove ad, estate agents upload the details to rightmove!
Get yourself in a position to proceed and be nice, build a relationship with the staff in the branch.

Cash buyers ready to go. With good contacts with the estate agents.

Networking. Obviously works better if you’re already fairly local or have family connections to an area. A surprisingly high number of houses seem to be sold through private sales to people that the owners already know or have recommended to them, at least in my experience.

You get off market views if your house is listed with them for sale, that way agent gets two sales for the price of one. Agent told me everyone who has their house listed for sale with them and is looking to buy gets to see what comes on the market a week before everyone else.

You need to meet the agents and be clear about your position and what you want
Then call or email them weekly to check in

Calling isn't enough, you need to meet estate agents in person so they remember you. We viewed a bunch of probably unsuitable properties but made sure the estate agents knew what we were after, knew we were solid buyers etc so that they had us in mind if anything came up. It was only in talking to an estate agent at one property who told us that an expensive house could go for quite a bit less as it had been on the market for a while, so we viewed it and he knew more about us so could advise the seller to take a low ball offer. Don't forget the power of face to face!

Thanks all - sounds like I’ve been approaching this wrong then. Will see if I can pop into some estate agents today in the area we’re looking at.

We built up relationships with the estate agents, they knew what we were looking for, that we were sensible, proceedable and wouldn’t waste their time.

When viewing one house he told us he’d just valued one on street we were interested in and we were first in, offered, accepted ….

The only times we've been offered off-market viewings have been when we've previously put in offers on other houses by those EAs, and they've financially qualified us and knew we were good buyers.

I did spend a morning dropping off printed out summaries of what we were looking for to about 12 EAs. Every single one was delighted at getting a print out with the details, as it saved them time asking questions. However, only one ever called us, and even then, just the once!

Even one of the ones who later offered us an off-market viewing (which we're now proceeding with, yay!) - the first house we offered on with them, they never called us about. It just came up on RightMove a few days after we'd seen them in person with our printout, and they'd said they had nothing then. So it's clear they have their priority buyers, and we only made it onto that special list later on because while that first offer was successful, the vendors pulled out after a few weeks due to personal reasons. As a result, they'd seen we were serious buyers from the progress we'd already made, so prioritised us for the one we're now hopefully going to buy.

Probably says it all that as our vendor has to make an onwards purchase, they said "we'll be helping them with that in our sister branch" and they magically secured a place a week later Took us six weeks of concerted hunting and several failed offers to get anywhere!

One EA we spoke to basically told us "Be annoying. Ring every few days." and went on to cite several anecdotes of buyers who benefited from that strategy. It is indeed all about the relationship and being remembered.

This has been an interesting read. Most of the viewings we've had so far have been 'open houses with appointments' so viewers booked every 20mins. Feel like we're literally just quickly shown around and then shipped out of the place ready for the next people who are usually just arriving! Impossible to forge any sort relationship with the EA in this scenario. Then we're told it went for significantly over anyway. However will look at perhaps dropping in to their offices and enquiring more directly. We are serious buyers in a very proceedable position but it just seems there's just too much competition right now have been enquiring if family and friends know any EAs who could help us get a foot in the door but unlikely lol.

I agree you need to build a rapport having personally turned up at each EA preferably with a typed A4 sheet outlining your position, highlighting your budget, which solicitor you will be using, financials etc and be warm and friendly to the bastards. This is a minimum.

Better to be selling through or about to instruct the same EA then you get first dibs. That’s why if you are looking in the same area it’s better to list your property with the strongest agent that performs the best, not necessarily which agent charges you the lowest sales commission.

In this current market by the time properties are listed on Rightmove with the time lag, many have already gone.

There are some online agents that deal with off market properties and as pp have said, get yourself registered with all the agents and show how serious you are. They keep a list of hot buyers and you want to be one of the people they call first. I was once shown a property and agent had valued and he didn't even have the listing yet!

We were on the doorstep and first in as estate agent had told us it was coming up. But wanted to say it was before market went mad and allowed we’d spent a disappointing few months just missing out or traipsing round the dross that hadn’t shifted wondering how the hell other people managed to move. We also sold in a private sale and had a few people after saying they’d have been interested if they’d known. We were selling.