Does my house need to be on the market before I can make an offer?

[joles1]

Our dream home has came up for sale, I have been browsing rightmove for over a year and there hasn't been one close to this. Our house isn't on the market as there has been nothing worth selling ours for for a long time. The house I'm interested in is owned by someone in the family (not a close relative). I have messaged them directly and arranged a viewing for Friday but there are first time buyers viewing tomorrow and I'm sure it will get snapped up plus they will be in a better position. My question is, would it be worth contacting estate agent tomorrow morning to get ours on the market as quickly as they can? If we miss out on this house then I wouldn't be interested in proceeding with moving though. I'm worried we'll go through the hassle of getting ours up and then by then it will be gone, but I don't know if you can offer before yours is on the market?

Have never bought and sold before as for this house we were FTB. Any advice greatly appreciated.

There is no requirement for it to be on the market before you make an offer, but some agents / sellers aren’t interested in buyers who haven’t done so or haven’t got an offer already, so it could work against you, especially if there are other potential buyers who are chain free.

Equally, as you know the seller, they may be willing to wait.

If you offered on my house and you weren’t even on the market I would say “thank you so much for your offer, once you have a buyer and the chain below you is complete and therefore you are able to proceed with the purchase I will take it off the market for you. In the meantime if we can find someone who can proceed then we will go with them”

I'm pretty certain we would want to put in an offer and pay the asking price. But they did say if the ftb puts in an offer tomorrow that they're looking for then they will accept, so it could be all for nothing if I manage to get an EA out tomorrow, take pics etc then hear that it's too late. Our spare room isn't the most photo worthy at the minute either as we were about to start decorating it for DS to move into so is pretty empty.

Yeah I'm just 99% sure we're going to miss out for this reason and I'm so gutted about it as it ticks every single one of our boxes 😞

I wondered this too when I saw a great house. The estate agent told me to put an offer forward but I did think that they would then say to other potentially interested buyers that there’s an offer on the table to make them more likely to offer too.

You can offer but it won’t go any further than that until you are in a position to proceed, so until you have an offer on yours.

I probably wouldn’t buy from someone in the family, even if they aren’t distant relatives. Buying and selling is stressful enough without them leaving behind a shithole that you had to sort out/finding something on the survey and needing to reduce the price/one side not dealing with enquiries quickly enough and then you having to see them at a family wedding in 18 months.

No. I've just exchanged on a new home. Our house wasn't on the market when we made an offer but we had it on within the week and kept our sellers updated throughout.

This gives me a tiny bit of hope. Was there much interest in the property you bought and was the estate agent fine with you making an offer? My worry is they will just dismiss my offer.

I would approach and list with the same estate agents who are selling the property, they will be more positive about your offer if it results in 2x the commission.

Why are you using the estate agent when the house is being sold by a family member? At the very least you could have saved them estate agent fees?

Probably because the seller is bound by agents and would still be liable for fees, depending on the contract.

Yes I was thinking this however I think the EA they are using doesn't do the no sale no fee option, therefore if we put ours on the market and didn't get this house then we'd still have to pay. I need to double check that though.

Yes as sensoria said. I only knew about the house because I saw it on rightmove, if only I knew sooner then it could of definitely saved the fees but I haven't seen them in a long time to know about it.

We saw our dream home pop up on Rightmove. Spoke to the bank who agreed we could port our mortgage, got an agreement in principle for the extra we needed to borrow. We weren't thinking of moving at all until we saw that house. Phoned the same EA who was selling the dream house. Put ours up on the market same day and told them we had an AIP etc. We weren't allowed to even view the house til we had an offer on ours. Luckily, we put the house on the market on the Thursday, had a viewing on the Sunday, accepted an offer on our house by the Tuesday. We then viewed the dream house on the Thursday morning, put an offer in as we walked out the door, and had it accepted the next day.

Definitely think it helped that we listed with the same agent, and had as much sorted out financially as we could to show we were serious.

We made it really clear to the EA that we were only selling to buy that home, and if we didn't get it we would have to let our buyers down.

We were in a similar boat, no intention to move, happened to see a house we were interested in and went to view it. Fell in love. Cue VERY quickly ringing our bank, getting an AIP, and putting an offer in. Estate agent basically laughed us out of their office.

Got valuations from the seller's EA and a couple more local to us, went with a different agent to our seller. 2 days later we were on the market, and offered again. Still laughed at. 5 days later, under offer on our flat, offered again - accepted!

Been a long road but we're hoping to move in before October!