Anyone here under offer but not found anywhere to buy yet?

[Wanderinstar80]

I know this isn't the done thing, especially on Mumsnet, but where I live the majority of people tend to buy first then put their house on the market. This area is very sought after due to school catchments and houses tend to sell quickly, even with the high interest rates (although some are coming back on the market after mortgage applications fall through).

However we have now lost out on three properties and two are because others were more proceedable so we're debating selling first then looking to buy.

For those of you who have done this, what did/are you doing if you can't find a place to buy? I think this may be our situation if we sell first as there are hardly any properties on the market due to the economic situation.

Unfortunately we can't go into rented (no rental properties in this area, porting mortgage so will lose fixed rate).

It's a difficult choice to make isn't it. All you can do is get your house on the market and hope for the best. Worse case scenario if you can't find anywhere then you will just have to pull out of the sale of your house which does happen quite a lot especially with the lack of houses coming onto the market

Indeed @bjkmummy , the schools go back next week and I'm hoping more houses come onto the market. I guess if we do market before buying we could always say to prospective buyers that we still need to find somewhere ourselves, that way they know where they stand.

I would say it’s standard to sell prior to buying. In our area you can’t even get a viewing unless your proceedable a lot of the time.
we are SSTC, and I flagged with our EA this week that I’m concerned they’ll pull out as we can’t find anywhere to buy, thankfully our buyers understand that the market isn’t great right now and aren’t in a rush! I think given the current market people will be more understanding that it might take you longer to find somewhere.

Yes we're under offer but struggling to find somewhere to buy

Selling up then looking to purchase is not an option

We're in SE London and to rent a bog standard 3 bed semi would be at least £2.5k per month

That's well over double our monthly mortgage payment!

Plus we need to port our existing mortgage to keep the decent rate when we fixed Aug 2022 just before Liz Truss-ster-fuck came along!

@Caitlin991 I hope potential buyers woukd be understanding. Where we are it's definitely more the norm the other way around, we first started looking last year at houses and pretty much every vendor had bought somewhere else first, plus I've never had an EA refuse to allow viewings due to not being proceedable. Maybe because this is such a sought-after area and no shortage of buyers?

I'm hoping that despite the economic situation, there will be another influx if houses on rightmove as we move into autumn, so we need to think soon about what to do.

Unfortunately, if we can't find a suitable place to buy we'll have to take ours off the market

We're upsizing to a 3 bed semi (currently 2 bed split level maisonette)

Were zone 5 SE London also zone 4 station not far

We've taken a reduction of 10% on our original asking price

So this has now impacted our affordability

Unfortunately around us 3 bed semis are now around 100K more than they we're back in summer 2021 when we first had thoughts about selling

However, our property stayed at the same asking price as the valuation we received in summer 2021- and we've now taken a 10% hit

Coupled with crazy rising interest rates/costs of mortgage I think it'll be a miracle if we are able to move

We're just hopeful more properties will come on after the school holidays

In any event, we'll be offering under asking price- see no harm in starting at 10% reduction on properties who have been on for at least the last 2-3 months

And the whole selling before buying thing could work, if you have the means to pay £££ in rent or are able to move in with family

Otherwise I don't know how people do it?

Unless you're moving to a new area and you rent first?

You have to be honest with your Buyer that you haven’t found anywhere yet, and carry on looking. That’s all you can do.

They may accept it for a few weeks or even months. But obviously the longer it goes on, the higher the risk that they will find somewhere else to buy instead of yours. If they’re smart they won’t start spending any money on the Purchase until you have found somewhere to buy. And they won’t stop checking Rightmove.

I wish we had £££ for rent. There are pretty much no rentals around here atm, the ones that were previously available were 2.5 times our mortgage. If we did go into rented we would lose our fixed rate of 1.19% which we are porting. No family to move in with either. There's no easy answers unfortunately!

No, it sounds a tough situation.

I would put your house on the market anyway. It might take longer than you imagine to get proceed-able offers. And even if it doesn’t, you have learnt that you have to do it this way round to secure a great house when it comes onto the market.

It’s so funny how different areas work isn’t it, the area we’re looking is also really sought after & nice houses that go up are still going really fast with multiple people putting offers in, so there’s little point in non proceedable people viewing as they just wouldn’t get a look in.

We’re also really hoping for an influx in Autumn (& hopefully by then interest rates might have dropped a little too).

I would just be honest with your buyers and tell them you’ve not found anywhere to buy yet and aren’t willing to rent. If your house is the one for them I’m sure they’ll be happy to wait :).

We were down sizing and moving to another location. We had no problem finding a buyer and we’re completely open about the difficulty in finding anything. We lost our first buyer and the first house we offered on but eventually sold because our buyer really wanted the house and was prepared to wait. It took us 14 months to do it all. I think being completely open is all you can do really.

We sold ours before finding anywhere in April. We had two offers on the first day of viewings, one at full asking price, so snapped it up. We made it clear at this point though that we hadn’t found anywhere yet and wouldn’t move into rented, so our buyers would need to wait. They were very understanding of that as first time buyers in rented. It took us 7 weeks I think to find one. We’re now 8 weeks into conveyancing and should be completing in the next 3 weeks. As long as you are clear on the situation, it’s fine.

We accepted an offer in April and still haven’t found anywhere. Our buyer is hanging on as he really wants this house. But we just can’t find anything suitable and we are finding that sellers are holding out for top prices. Really hoping they will hang on as selling again nos would be much more difficult.

glad we have done it this way though - know what our house could sell for and in a strong position to move (cash buyer on ours).