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!

Put your house on the market first, we thought ours would sell quickly but the market was slow last year and after being on rightmove for 3 months the newbuilds we were looking at all sold up. We ended up taking out a loan and doing the kitchen and flooring up instead.
Our house is lovely just has a small garden..no use thinking about moving if yours won't even sell.

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying you'd be interested.. but if the answer is no, then you leave it. At the end of the day, it could be someone's much loved forever home (I hate that phrase actually but you get my point). But there's always that slight chance that they're thinking about selling, and if they know they have a buyer anyway, it'd make things a lot easier!

We get these letters all the time. (Our mid-century house is particularly attractive to architects). It isn't harassment and no solicitor worth their salt would take your money to say it was.

I’ve had a few of these. I always ignore, especially the ones with a story about how much they would love to raise a family there etc. It’s my home, I’m not interested in anyone else’s family growing up there.
If I was planning to sell, I’d go on the market properly. In a desirable area it’s surely the best way of getting the best price for a house, rather than a private sale.

I’ve done that in the past to a group of properties in the one area I was interested in. At the time I was ready to purchase. I didn’t receive any responses. A few years ago I was lucky as one came up for sale and I was lucky enough to purchase it.

Annoyingly , I had a note delivered offering about 10k more than the contract we'd signed the week before ; by a lovely French lady. Didn't even have a For Sale sign up . Word just got around the local school which we were only 5 doors from and it was super popular. Oh well.Would have preferred to sell it to her anyway but sadly too late. It's worth a shot. If I didn't have a contract done and dusted I would certainly have invited her in for a look around and an offer.

Or they've just been on the receiving end of such tactics and know that it may be perceived as weird and creepy by the recipient.

What tactics? Someone dropping a polite note through the door saying they’d be interested if you were ever wanting to sell?

This happens to us a lot. We have a very distinctive house near a very prestigious prep school. I hate the notes! Hate them. It feels invasive for some reason. The worst one was when we were fully gutting and renovating, people drove into our driveway, parked up and wandered in, and we found them looking around the house l/building site, while the builders were there. Dangerous too.

The foreman came to get me (we lived during the build on site in an annexe) Apparently they’d said they were ‘interested buyers’ and the foreman was worried as he thought we might have financial difficulties, which would obviously have impacted the build.

I basically told them to fuck off my land 😂 I should have put this on the CF thread.

Oh wow!! This is incredibly entitled behaviour! I'd be annoyed too.

We had a lot of people asking whether we were putting on the market when we gutted ours, but no-one was that intrusive! Our builder was a bugger for inviting the neighbours over to show them what we were doing though, but only when it was a shell, not when there was any semblance of what it would look like decor wise etc!

I can empathise. We live on a small cul de sac so tucked away that even locals don’t know it’s here. We get notes through our door regularly, usually peaking when there’s an event on at the local school or park both of which we overlook. I think people must come down here to try and park and that’s how they find us. On average we get anything up to 6 heartfelt notes a year depending on the market . Sometimes I feel I know far too much about the lives of complete strangers just because they’ve taken a fancy to the house!
Generally, I don’t mind and I have responded to most of the notes with a polite, ‘no, we’re not selling’ I did point somebody in the direction of a house on an adjacent road which I knew was about to come on the market, and which they bought. However, I reached peak irritation with the CFs who not only rang the bell one Sunday morning but engaged me in a conversation for half an hour about why I should sell to their daughter who apparently always loved the house from when she used to play there as a child with a previous owners DDs. Two days later, the daughter, partner and three kids showed up apparently convinced that her parents had arranged a viewing of our house which was not on the market and which we’ve already told them we had no intention of selling. And they said I was ‘very rude’ when I refused to show them around the house!
BTW, there was no way that the daughter playing in the house with her childhood friends was true;, the previous owner didn't have any daughters and had no idea who the prospective buyers were. .

Apologies if it’s been said before, but wasn’t the personal note a recommendation on Location about 20 years ago? I blame Phil and Kirsty.

Very true, actually. You've just reminded me of the bloke in the news a couple of years ago from Luton (iirc) who experienced just that. Scary.

I said twice that it wasn't the same thing - just the principle of somebody clearly telling you that they're effectively waiting until you die to swoop on something/somebody precious to you.

That’s not a true comparison though is it?! You do not really own a house, you just a caretaker until the next people come along. Fine if you don’t want to sell, just ignore it but to claim it’s devastatingly inappropriate is just rubbish. People move all the time for all sorts of reasons, not just because someone is about to die. And if you are in that position and you see it as something unsettling and threatening, then I suggest your paranoia levels are through the roof!

This is a horrible thing to do. To actually knock on somebody's door and tell them that their house is in need of a lot of repair - which of course they will know very well - and then tell them you could do a better job of looking after their house than they could.

They may have been saving and planning for ages to get the work done, but some wealthy person scopes out their house as one that they could make a mint on.

If it's so bad - and presumably you're looking for a bargain - how are they going to afford somewhere else to move to? Or does that not matter, as long as they can just get lost so somebody with money can cash in on their house?

Where did that poster say they did any of that? Do you always make stuff up to pad out any posts with imagined scenarios?

If her DH is a builder/developer or on the lookout for a doer-upper he may well target houses that look in need of some investment and there's a chance that the current owners might be glad of the opportunity to rid themselves of a property that's become too much for them to manage. But at no point did she mention him having any of those conversations that are entirely in your head.

No, I didn't say that I would personally be upset about it. I'd be annoyed and insulted that they thought I would be too thick to know how to sell my house, if I wanted to, but I wouldn't be traumatised.

I was thinking from the point of view of the many elderly and vulnerable people - like my late DGM - who would have been very upset to have somebody wanting to take their home from them.

And yes, like my DGM, lots of people DO have paranoia or other mental health conditions. They are horrendous, extremely life-limiting and frightening for them to have to live with and not something to be brushed aside with a bit of a laugh.

Agreed!

@DalzielOrNoDalzielAndDontPascoe your posts are making some huge leaps. No one said the PP was knocking on doors informing them how run down their property was! And you can’t stop doing something because a tiny minority of people might take it the wrong way, otherwise no one would do anything at all!!!

Come on, it's obvious why he's targeted them, isn't it? Especially if he introduces himself as a builder or has his van parked outside. Then when he makes them a presumably low-ball offer - based on pointing out all of the faults of their home - one that, as I said, probably wouldn't be enough for them to move somewhere comparable.

Unless he lied, he wouldn't even have the excuse that he was looking for a nice home for his family and he thought that theirs would be perfect - especially if it's very obvious to anybody that it very much isn't (yet) perfect.

There are plenty of property auctions that he could attend, which tend to be the natural place for doer-uppers/run-down houses - ones which the owners he targets could very easily put their home into, should they want to sell it - but I get the impression that many people who do this are after a substantially below-market price that they reckon they can grab by circumventing the usual channels and thus considerably underpaying the seller what their house is worth. They seem to overemphasise how much they can both save by not using an estate agent, but I highly doubt that they're only looking for 1% off the value.

Most people don't want others poking around and evaluating their property for how much cash they reckon they could make out of it - unless they've actually put it on the market, in which case its perfectly fair game.

I concede that nobody said he was actually telling them that their home was all run-down - but it's very strongly implied, don't you think? Especially when he comes out with his very low offer and justifies it to them by pointing out all of the faults.

If somebody was trying to promote a local slimming club from a stall in the street, they wouldn't be approaching the very slender passers-by, would they? If they stopped you, it would be very evident why they'd picked you out, even if they didn't say a word about your weight - and most people would be equally indignant to be randomly insulted in such a way.

Where would you expect the residents to move to, with the low amount that he would be wanting to pay them? Most run-down and neglected homes are sold as probate sales, after the former resident obviously doesn't now need anywhere else to live.

If worded correctly it's definitely not weird and most (normal) people would take it as a compliment, not some kind of threat on their life.

Disagree with the people saying you need to have your house on the market/have sold though, in this specific situation. If I received this note and it prompted me to consider selling, knowing you'd sold your house already would put me off, as I'd feel rushed. The fact you'd bothered to put the note through, especially if you'd made it clear it was just my house you were specifically interested in, would make it clear you were serious about selling up.

However, from what you've posted, I doubt you'd be able to make them an attractive enough offer to tempt them to sell. Nothing to lose from trying though apart from being taken to court for harassment apparently 😂

I'd bin this as I'd think I'd be going to trouble to get the house looking nice when they just want any. Be specific.

Just to add, I did bin a letter of this kind but it was a few weeks after my dad died (his house). They clearly knew the situation but wrote as if they didn't and were just looking for a house in the area. Had they actually been more honest I probably wouldn't have binned it.