Viewings today - no one is on the market!

[Tiger2018]

Hey everyone I'm totally pissed off today - went on the market on Friday and had 2 viewings through for today. All great! Both of them confirmed at the viewing though that they have houses to sell (fine) but aren't on the market yet?!?!

Has anyone else had this? I'm definitely going to ask future viewers for more details of their position before arranging viewings as it just feels like a royal waste of time otherwise. I'm using Strike estate agents so will speak to them too tomorrow to see what they recommend I can ask before agreeing in future.

We put our house on the market knowing we woukd have offers (desirable location, no new properties able to be built there). We had 22 viewings in 6 days, and 3 offers by the end of day 3.
When we viewed our current house (the one we bought) we were technically not proceedable (ours didn't go live for another 2 days) but I knew we would be- we offered within 6 days of viewing it. Our situation was unusual I know, but not all "unproceedables" are time wasters.

Our friend had an offer on their house. The buyer was in the process but house wasn't on the market yet. It was on the next weekend and had an offer accepted the same weekend so it's not always bad.

I put my house up first after some estate agents wouldn't let me view houses if it wasn't on the market. I really didn't want to do this as I knew mine would sell quick anyway. As I expected my house had around 40 viewings over the course of a weekend and multiple offers.
unfortunately there were no houses we wanted to buy so we took it back off and had to let buyers down.
in future I will not be putting it on until I have found a house first.

I wouldn't discount anyone.

Thanks for all your thoughts so far.

For those saying 2 viewings is crap so far - I disagree. The house went on Friday evening and I think that with the bank holiday, people have assumed nothing new will be listed until Monday.

Fingers crossed I'll get more viewings through soon.

Oh and the local agent wanted 4.5k commission and I would of had to pay for photos and listing on top. I just don't see how they earn their commissions!

I the estate agent fee - mine was excellent and really earned their fee. I had about forty viewings - it fell through three times and the estate agent was on the phone between bidders, solicitors the vendor of the house I was buying to keep everything on track. The hard work starts after the house is sale agreed.

Do you have a house to move into yet?

At the moment one of the most prevalent issues is lack of stock.

I think your views may change if you end up in the situation many are in now where they’re under offer for months but can’t then find the onward move then it will start to make sense.

Good luck!! It’s the worst thing I’ve gone through in my life 😆

Agree completely!!! Ours was a nightmare once the legal stuff started as the buyers solicitor was horrendous. The sale would have fallen through if it wasn't for the estate agent working together with our solicitor and being absolutely amazing. Worth every penny and even sent them a chocolate hamper afterwards haha.

But the fact that these non buyers got through means they didn't provide adequate customer service

We've just sold our house and honestly 2 viewings on a bank holiday weekend is absolutely crap. No matter what you say for a house in a desirable area it's appalling.

Being with strike will definitely put buyers off. An online agent might work for you but as a buyer they are definitely to be avoided. The few times we viewed a house with an online agent we were harassed, rang multiple times and treated very poorly, it stopped us bothering with any house using them.

If you use a free online estate agent you won't get the same performance as if you use one you pay for who is paid to vet potential buyers for you. You don't get as nothing for nothing.

For those saying 2 viewings is crap so far - I disagree. The house went on Friday evening and I think that with the bank holiday, people have assumed nothing new will be listed until Monday.

Most people looking to buy a house have alerts set up. So if they're looking to buy a house like yours they would have seen your house, regardless of the bank holiday weekend.

I really hope you get more interest this week, but as others have said selling the house is the easy bit. Getting through to completion and exchange is much more difficult, especially without a traditional EA.

Strike are terrible. We will never view a house with them again.

I don't like online agents, and they haven't been doing a good job if those viewers are not proceedable - waste of time as you say.
However I've never had an agent charge on top for photos and marketing, whether it be an inexpensive flat for £100k or a £2m house with glossy brochure. Are there no other high street agents in your area? Having sold over 20 properties I'd always use a real agent.

Two viewings, it should have been at least ten

Less fussed about online EAs as I have a real life one I'll deal with so it wouldn't be something I'd have to directly deal with.

But I wouldn't do a viewing with the owner there. Done it once before and never again. I don't want your guided tour of your home. I want to see if it's an item I want to purchase. I don't want to talk to you through the transaction.

A good estate agent is worth their weight in gold putting up with shit from all directions to keep a deal moving forward.

OP you sound like you have very little idea what an estate agent actually does and why they charge for their time. They’re not just sitting twiddling their thumbs and scoffing at people who are silly enough to pay them thousands to put up a board. They spend significant time on arranging a sale, for which they should quite rightly be paid. If they do their job as they should then you’re likely to end up with way more than the £4.5k fee (which I assume is about 1.5%) in your pocket as a result of them having facilitated a higher purchase price. As PPs have said, they usually have a list of eager buyers waiting and local contacts such as people whose purchase of a similar house has just fallen through. You get none of that with an online agent and like other posters, I wouldn’t even view if I saw you were on with an online agent.

Just recoiling at the headline fee and clamping your pockets shut can be very silly and shortsighted. I’m glad you’re pleased with how things are going but I agree with PPs that two unproceedable viewings is really rubbish in this market for opening weekend. Bank hol means more people at home looking at Rightmove etc. not fewer!!

I hope it all works out for you.

Just had a look at the Strike website. You aren’t even paying them for their service! I don’t think you can expect them to be great estate agents at all.

Just to be clear, I am paying Strike for their services - it definitely isn't free! They make their money through add-ons like referrals to solicitor/moving companies/EPC etc too.

I've had one viewing today and another already booked for later in the week. I don't need dozens to people through the door.

OP why on earth wouldn’t you want dozens of people through the door? Literally the whole point of marketing a property is to get as many viewings as possible and covert as many of them as possible into offers, ideally sparking some competitive bidding. You sound like you don’t really care about selling your house for the highest price possible - if that’s the case then fine but it would be highly unusual!

Also, you would be bonkers to use a solicitor that is paying an online estate agent for referrals. A good solicitor won’t get involved in that kind of nonsense because they won’t need to. Use one that you get personal recommendations about from friends and family who have themselves used them. A bad conveyancer can easily result in a chain falling through and costing you thousands of pounds and untold stress. (The thousands of pounds that you’re reluctant to pay a proper EA!)

Not trying to be rude but I can’t quite get my head around the approach you seem to be taking to one of the biggest and most important transactions in your adult life!

Surely you need dozens of people through the door? If your house is priced correctly and is in a sought after area you should have days of solid viewings.

It’s irrelevant that they’re not on the market yet.
we viewed a property, put in an offer, put our house on the market a few days later and it sold the same day

Our buyers weren’t on the market but when they saw our house the next day they went on the market and got 23 viewings booked within 2 hours!! Crazy!

I personally would be disappointed with only 2 viewers first weekend-
our home went on the market on bank holiday weekend in April and that first day we had 7 viewings booked.

I do agree when it comes to strike or purple bricks it does put me off initially.

I agree that it just takes that one buyer to want your home- but also it’s good to have a selection through!
you may have had these 2 potential buyers as strike had no more to offer so wanted something to happen?

I've had one viewing today and another already booked for later in the week.

So only 2 viewings this week? Do you really think that's acceptable in a desirable location?

I think you're going to be in for a shock when you try to buy your next house. Good houses in a desirable location can have 20+ viewings a day, and that's if they actually make it onto the open market.

I think you're going to be in for a shock when you try to buy your next house. Good houses in a desirable location can have 20+ viewings a day, and that's if they actually make it onto the open market.

I agree completely with this! The housing market is brutal we've had a nightmare buying and that's despite being on every list, offering more than 20k over, harassing agents for anything new coming on, viewing stuff before it came in the market and being so open minded we even consider projects and new builds.

Despite all this preemptive work even that didn't stop us being gazumped, going to best and final and losing out on multiple properties.

As others have said you sound very niave to the whole process.