If you viewed houses before yours was on the market…

[Floopdifloo]

…how serious were you about selling?

Somebody has booked in to view and I’ve just found out their property isn’t even on the market yet. I’m just wondering if it’s worth all the effort of getting the house spotless or whether I should just cancel it and tell the agent not to allow anyone to view who isn’t on the market at least.

Just to add - I have a disability and making my house like a bloody show home multiple times a week is absolutely exhausting.

If people just want something to do rather than being serious about buying then I’d rather cancel, but I wanted to see if anybody has actually ended up buying a house after viewing in this situation?

Where i live ( not in London) houses often sell by word of mouth!
If you do end up using an estate agent then houses can be sold within a matter of days.

Where is it?

A village in Saddleworth

I did, wanted the house so put ours on the market the very next day with the same agent. All went through relatively smoothly.
At that point in time I only wanted to sell for the right property and was very selective about what I went to see.
Go for it. Good luck.

I think it's an odd way round these days, having to have a buyer before you can find a house to buy yourself. We don't need to move so would only be selling if we found the right house, so we have to accept an offer with a view to pulling out if we don't find anywhere.

TBH I don`t think a "free for all" scrum will happen in many areas now.

We viewed a house recently without being on the market, though had had the state agent round to value so we knew our approximate budget. We were debating whether to go ahead with our planned renovation or put all the money into a new place to save the disruption. The house we viewed was about as perfect as we're likely to find within budget and we were planning to go on the market and offer if it was right, but in the end it convinced us that suffering through a build was the right decision for us (location of our house better for a variety of reasons). So we didn't view for a jolly, but weren't totally decided on moving either.

We are viewing a house today...ours isn't on the market yet but has been marketed by the EA...photos/ listing ready to go live. Ours should sell quickly due to location, schools, the house itself.

I've never sold really quickly

yeah, I hasn't experienced quick sale either.
We had a sale fail between exchange & completion. So that was awkward.
From 1st listing to genuine completion on that property was ... 10 months? In 2004.

My parents' house was listed for about 1.5 years. They chased offers downwards, sold for $200k under their highest offer (about 1995).

We view before ours is on the market, 8 property transactions in the last 10 years and for us this system works best IMO. I totally appreciate that viewings are annoying though and so understand your sentiment!

Currently looking to move but have a very small search area (walking distance of sons school) and are fussy, we don't want to mess our potential buyer around by pulling out of the sale if we can't find anything.

Generally houses that sell fast in a bad market are unusual for the area in some way, but are priced realistically.
EG have a couple of acres, or an amazing feature, or very private, or unusual size in that location, or whatever. A fairly standard house in an area with lots of fairly standard houses wont sell that fast (in a slow market) regardless of interior design unless its priced low.