Am I mad to think we can make offers without having listed our house?

[cakehoover123]

I've never sold a house and don't know how this works - so please be gentle.

We want to upsize, but don't actually have to move. We've started viewing houses. We haven't put our house on the market yet.

Estate agents seem amazed that we haven't listed our place yet, and are warning we'll never get an offer accepted.

I'm surprised by this, but then perhaps I'm an idiot.

Do chains generally work bottom-up - i.e. typical person in chain first lists and sells house, then tries to find somewhere quickly that they like to make an offer on?

I'd assumed they'd work top-down - i.e. typical person in chain first finds a house they like, then looks for buyer for their own place.

It seems so implausible that we'll find, offer and be accepted on a house we genuinely like in the precise 2-4 weeks after finding a buyer for ours. Feel a bit trapped.

But we're looking for a certain type of house in very particular area. What do people do in our situation? Sell then rent for a bit while waiting?

As I say I'm new to all this, so please be gentle.

When we sold, we would not even accept a viewing from a person who was not "proceedable". Would have been a complete waste of our time. Every potential viewer had to give proof of funds before they could make an appointment.

It can be done but many people won’t go
for it.

My DPs did this but it was a property which had been on the market for quite a while. They put their offer in and said they’d list with that agent straight away so the agent got 2 sales.

Some friends also did this and I couldn’t believe their vendors went for it, especially when they’d also had offers from chain free buyers. They were the soppy types who “wanted to sell to a family”.

We tried it and they wouldn’t accept until we’d sold and the whole chain was complete, wouldn’t give us a grace period or anything. We sold really quickly and they did accept then. But then they lost their onward purchase and asked us for a grace period for them to find something else. We didn’t and started looking again as the agents were being so cagey. We found something else better.

If you've got enough cash for a deposit on the new house and have enough income to get a mortgage in principle for the balance, you can go ahead and buy the new house, then sell at your leisure and use the proceeds from the sale to pay off a chunk of the new mortgage.

You end up owning both properties for a while, which is very expensive for a small number of months, but less faff than moving into a rental, less stressful overall and less expensive than a bridging loan.

Unfortunately we're in exactly the same situation.
I have found one estate agent who gets the market and understands our situation but others won't even let us view houses and are pretty rude about it too!

Yes this is the way now- there is such demand for houses, if you need to sell you're at a disadvantage, if lots have already sold and are chair free they would only consider selling to them. Otherwise it's a big waiting game and no guarantee anyone will want your place or that it will sell quickly eg what if it's listed or lots of legal complication, or your buyer pulls out due to chain etc

I mean, you can try, but the estate agent is right. I'd never accept an offer from a buyer who wasn't under offer themselves. And get a mortgage in principle soon as estate agent will want to see that if you offer

If you want to move you need to put your house in the market.
ideally you’d have offers when viewing houses but at the very least you need to show you’re serious about selling your house!

movement is generally up the chain

we moved early last year and yeah it sort of sucks in that you have to agree to sell your house before you have to house to move to, then just hope that the right house comes along. If it doesn’t then you’re back to square one.
We were lucky that A. It did and B. Our sellers were at the top of the chain so no further waits.
you have to be prepared to go into rented though unfortunately, especially with things moving so slowly.

I'd assumed they'd work top-down - i.e. typical person in chain first finds a house they like, then looks for buyer for their own place.

that’s not an unreasonable idea but in this market for a chain to go through you have to be absolutely sure someone is able to get a mortgage for the house at the bottom of the chain hence bottom up. Further up its less risky, I think.

We are currently doing it the wrong way around.
We saw our dream house (full transparency with the estate agent that our house was not listed).

Long story short, there was a lot of interest but the sellers accepted our offer, we put our house ask quickly as possible on the market with the same estate agent, had an open house, got and accepted an offer from the open house and currently in the survey and enquiry stage.

No contracts exchanged yet but keeping my fingers crossed.

Well you theoretically can place an offer on a house without being on the market yourself but its extremely unlikely that your offer will even be considered.

The EA will have to put your offer forward to the vendors with basic info about you, for example if your house is on the market, sold STC, you're in rented etc. Most vendors would dismiss your offer immediately and those that would accept, would most likely continue to market their house and have viewings with a hope to find a proceedable purchaser.

In many areas you are unlikely to get an offer accepted unless you have actually sold your house.

We did, but we had to prove that we didn't need to sell our house to proceed. (We had no mortgage on our old house and so had to prove deposit and mortgage in principal offer on our new house)

We made an offer before we had ours on the market - largely because the right house came up for us before we started properly looking.

We offered full asking price to try and make our offer as attractive as possible. They theoretically 'accepted' our offer but said they wouldn't take their house off the market until we had a firm offer on ours, which I understand. They were hedging bets basically.

We had to push quickly to get our house in the market. Fortunately got our house on the market within a week and got an offer the following week. However, it was 7 years ago, pre Brexit, pre Covid. It was a much stronger housing market than now. Not sure we'd pull it off now.

" in the precise 2-4 weeks after finding a buyer for ours"

But the process of selling a house doesn't take 2 to 4 weeks. It takes months and months. Where does the 2 - 4 weeks come in?

They want to know you will have the funds, yeah.

Are you buying a second home, or using a bridging loan or something? If so then you may need to make that clear - and you'll still need to show you have whatever source of funds it is.

Might work for some; depends on the timeline they want. A lot of people don't want a complicated chain but if you have a vendor that isn't in a huge rush to move you might be okay. Only thing is some EA'S only let proceedable buyers view anyway.

We were in a similar situation last year, didn’t have to move but saw a place we really liked. Got our house on the market within a couple of weeks, had a buyer lined up a couple of weeks later and only then did we make an offer (the house needs a lot of work which was putting off buyers so it had a lot of viewings but no other offers or interest - if the house we were after had more competition, I’m sure we would’ve been overlooked). It all worked out as we moved in last week 😊