Should I put a note through the door of the house I want to buy?

[Fourthmusketeer]

Is this a weird thing to do?

Our house isn't actually on the market yet, as we don't want to do that until we find another house we like. They so rarely come up - I've been looking for a year now and just nothing is quite suitable. But, there's a house I've loved for years. I just love everything about it. It's the perfect location, great size, perfect layout for us (DH is quite particular). It's a beautiful house. Once I'd looked it up on Rightmove I fell in love with it even more.

The current owners bought the house in 2021, so it's probably unlikely they'd be looking to sell. But, you never know?

Is it weird to put a note through their door to find out? Do I keep it fairly simple? So...don't let on how much I love their house and how I've admired it for years? 🤣😬

There is of course a chance they contact us off the back of the note, allow us to view their property, and then once we actually see it we decide it's not what we thought. That feels really awkward...having contacted them to begin with 🫣

I'm not sure how much it would be worth now. It was close to the top of our price range back in 2021, but I'm not sure whether COVID skewed values somewhat?

Thanks!

OP, I think you should get your house valued, choose an agent and get photos taken, so it's ready to go on Rightmove at the click of a button. That way, if a house you like does come up, you'll be ready to go.

I live in an area where demand outstrips supply and good houses are usually sold in a bidding war, with chain-free cash buyers in the strongest position, and someone with a house to sell that isn't even on the market yet has no chance at all. DH and I have been trying to move house for nearly a year now and I originally thought I'd wait until the right house came up before marketing mine, but quickly realised that wouldn't work. We put ours on the market, accepted an offer from a chain-free buyer, and that put us in the strongest possible position (short of completing the sale and renting, to break the chain) for buying our next house. Sadly we haven't found one yet - lost out on one to chain-free buyers - and our buyers got sick of waiting and pulled out, which means that ours is back on the market. It's a pain but needs must. I think it's fair as long as you make it clear to potential buyers that the sale is conditional on you finding an onward purchase (which we did).

As for putting notes through doors, I never would have considering doing it until an agent told me that about 20% of sales in the area we want are private sales with no agent involved at all. I find that staggering. So with that in mind I did put polite notes through doors. I didn't get a single response though! I have heard of a few people who bought houses this way but they must have been lucky.

As a seller I'd go through an agent anyway because with a bidding war you can get a lot more from the sale and it more than covers the agent fees.

I did this!

Yeah, it got be absolutely nowhere but you never know

It works for Kirsty and Ph

Phil

@OverwhelmedAndUnderprepared

Sure but that's wasting the agent's time. If you go ahead with photos but don't list the property, they will probably charge you a fee

I disagree about wasting their time. My thinking is that you will market the house eventually, you've just done the prep work so it's not a stressful rush to get the photos done and the listing live.

Also, it's part of the job of an estate agent. Some people are time wasters. I have encountered people who put their house up for sale - so the agents did the photos and viewings etc - and then decided not to move after all. I doubt the agent charged them. There's no obligation to sell or to pay the agent if you don't get an offer you're happy with or find an onward purchase. Similarly, sales can fall through, not the seller's fault, they wouldn't have to pay agent fees.

The agent's job is to see the sale through from start to finish, they get sizeable fees if they manage it, and I'm sure their budgeting accounts for time spent on sales that don't happen in the end.

Someone knocked on our door offering to buy our house as they had heard we were thinking of putting it on the market. We got the house valued by three estate agents and they were willing to pay the top valuation. They, in the meantime sold their house and went into rented accommodation, until we found a house we wanted to buy.

I do think you need to have an offer for your house before you ask someone if you can buy theirs.

The people in question haven't mentioned they're thinking of selling though. It's far more likely they're going to say "nope, we have no intention of selling at all" or just ignore the note than "oh actually we would have sold to you but you've not sold yours yet, so we won't".

My husband knocked on the door of our current house - been here for 12 years now!

I think a note through the letterbox is ok but knocking on the door isn't. It worked for some people, fine, but I think a lot of people would feel irritated or intimidated by it. A note wouldn't bother me but someone knocking would!

It’s on a private road, so I don’t think they were just driving past. 😬

I'm not sure how much it would be worth now.

Whatever it's worth, you'd need to be offering substantially more than that to convince someone who's not on the market to sell. You certainly wouldn't be getting it at a 'need to sell' price.

I always find a house I want to buy before marketing mine because I've never wanted to leave a good house without a better one to go to and would stay if I couldn't find one .
We are in our 4 th house now and can't see us moving until we downsize but our house is quite unique . I wouldn't be offended if a note came through the door .

I bought a previous house on a specific street that I liked after putting notes through doors. It turned out one couple was just thinking about moving and we negotiated a fair price and bought it without any agent’s fees so we were all very happy. I hadn’t sold my house at the time I dropped letters in but luckily sold quickly. I’d definitely do it if I was you. Nothing to lose!

I'd think you'd need to offer a very generously enhanced price in order to get them to agree to sell to you rather than putting it on the open market to get the best price.

Even then, I'd still be very suspicious of somebody wanting to prevent you from advertising it openly and eliminate all other potential buyers. After all, if they so desperately want your house and aren't out to take advantage of you, and are genuine and proceedable, what's stopping them from making you the best offer, whilst you just check the market as normal, in the confidence that you most assuredly won't get a better offer from anybody else? The difference could well be far more than any estate agency's commission.

Just as I'd be suspicious of a tradesman who urged you not to get any other quotes and give them the work straightaway, because they will "definitely be the cheapest". Except you're potentially talking about losing tens, even hundreds of thousands, rather than maybe a few hundred pounds.

Even if they hadn't been thinking of selling until you asked, once you've put the thought into their minds, they may well not wish to limit their options to just you - same as I might see an advert for Hovis and it spurs me to pop into my local bakery.

I wouldn't be offended to get a note through the door, but I certainly wouldn't have responded unless I was actively in the process of wanting to move. In which case I'd direct them to my estate agent.

They're not trying to prevent them from advertising it though. They want to know if they're willing to sell it, which they can't do without asking. Would be odd to put a note through saying "hi, I wondered if you'd consider putting your house on the open market so I might be in with a chance of buying it".

I only wrote notes because I heard that some people prefer to sell privately without advertising openly. I intentionally worded my note to explain that I was interested whether they wanted to sell privately or through an agent.

Yes, this was the same for us. We said something along the lines of;

• love the local area and want to stay here
• looking for 4 bedrooms or more
• if you are thinking of selling or know someone who is and would like a chat without any pressure/expectation then please contact us via email

We had 3 good leads, all of whom who were willing to talk about see selling/viewing, and one which turned into a sale. In terms of what we offered - we paid asking price of the mid-range of three valuations but also waited over 5 months for them to find an onward purchase, so we saved them EA fees and gave them an enormous amount of flexibility. They might have got more on the open market, but may not have had the flexibility, privacy or ease that we offered them as private buyers. So definitely worth a shot!

But what makes people think they have the automatic right to know whether anybody will be up for selling a house they rather fancy - any more than they might 'just' stop somebody they fancy in the street and see if they might be up for a one-night stand?! After all, you never know if you don't ask!!

If folk want to sell their homes, or even just test the market, they know perfectly well how to go about it. They don't even need to engage an estate agent if they don't want to - they can just put up a sign on the door or fence if they want people to knock and enquire.

We're assuming that everybody who does this will politely and non-threateningly enquire and leave it in the court of the homeowner, but how do we know how pressurised somebody might feel if the asker is persuasive - especially the elderly and/or vulnerable people that some people on this thread laugh about and effectively deny exist.

It's common for people in this situation to try to convince the owner to avoid using an EA, to save 1% or 2%. That then potentially removes other safety barriers that using an EA brings, though, if you're doing it informally 'as friends.

Yes, it clearly works sometimes, but if you're genuine and not trying to take advantage as a buyer, why wouldn't you advise them to advertise it openly (whether through am EA or just a sign/board/advert of their own)? Don't you want them to be reassured that you were their best buyer, and they haven't massively sold themselves short?

How would enquirers react if the homeowner said that they hadn't been thinking of selling before, but now there's interest, they want to engage an EA and will let them know once it's on the market, so they have a chance to make their offer, along with any other interested parties? Would every such enquirer totally respect this decision?

As I said, this tactic all seems to me to be designed to work one way - and has the very real potential to be abusive and red-flaggy.

We had this back in about 2013ish.

It was in fact the son of the previous owner whose childhood home it was and they wanted to buy it back for sentimental reasons. Bearing in mind that we had purchased it off their parents a mere 22 years earlier in 1991 and completed renovated the place so it’d be completely unrecognisable to what it was when we first moved in.
We declined - we’d spent a lot of time, effort and money on this house and we were not ready to move - it had become ‘sentimental’ for us too…. I did respond back and say that they’re more than welcome to contact us to arrange to come in for a coffee and see the house now…. We didn’t hear anything back until 2023 when their mother had died a few months before and they wanted to go down memory lane!
We let them in and had a good chat and told them that we were planning to move in the next two years (we actually moved last week) and if they were still interested we would let them know…. But they’d moved away from the area.

I do think it’s strange just to go to one random house if it has no ‘history’ to you…..

They don’t have the automatic right to know and if the owner of the property wants to ignore the note through the door, then that’s their prerogative. Absolutely no harm done. How persuasive can you actually be via a polite note, which is what 90% of the posters are suggesting is acceptable. Your paranoia that someone is going to rock up and demand someone sell their property to them in a threatening manner is a little extreme. No one is expecting the OP to hold these people to ransom, it’s just a simple enquiry. Most normal people would not feel threatened or upset by this if done in a respectful manner. I’m not sure why you insist otherwise. You seem to inhabit a world where it’s always the worst case scenario and everyone has an ulterior, more sinister agenda. The homeowner, if indeed they want to sell, can actually benefit from not paying an extortionate fee to the estate agent middle man, you do know this is possible and can save a lot of money? That is not one sided at all! Huge benefits not having to keep your home pristine, have all the photos done, spend money on the spec and floor plans, have people traipsing through every minute, feeling let down when people don’t like it etc. Selling a house is a pain in the arse so I would be overjoyed to take the months of waiting and cleaning and tidying and disappointment out of the equation. There are many ways to do this safely without estate agents, you can actually agree a price you are both happy with and go forward with the sale. I don’t understand why you always seem to be spouting the worst case scenarios, thats not a healthy way to view the world. Not everyone is out to get you. 😁

It's irrelevant if some people have ulterior motives or use threatening behaviour though when we're discussing a note through the door as OP has fallen in love with a particular house.

EAs do bugger all than introduce the buyer to the vendor imo, and "safety barriers" come from solicitors. Regardless, if somebody is hoping to have their dream house sold to them, they're not going to care if the potential seller wants to go through an EA anyway. They are probably quite aware that it's a massive longshot that these people will actually sell their house out the blue so even if the owner decides to put it on the open market they're still in a better position as they have a chance of securing it rather than none at all. The convincing them not to use an EA is probably more offering it as an incentive to the owner, that they'll save money/stress from showing it to multiple people.

You seem to assume the only reason people would put a note through is to take advantage or benefit financially by getting the house cheaper, when actually they just really love a particular house (or area) and are grasping at straws or just taking a punt to see if it could happen.

Same thing happened when my granny died. We kept the note, rang them and sold them the house bypassing any EA fees or viewings or hassle. Made life a ton easier selling to them opposed to it going in the open market.

I made the right choice in our situation though as I got 3 valuations, put it on at the highest one, then the first person to view it paid substantially more for us not to let anyone else see it.

Had I sold to the person who put the note through I assume we would have agreed a price midway between the highest and lowest valuation so I actually got more for the house... despite cutting my nose off to spite my face!

I'd give it a go.
Your own house can be put on the market very quickly if the other people are interested in selling.