Should/can we offer on a house before both our places sell - what’s the done thing?

[rainydaysandmondaysagain]

DP and I are each selling houses in order to buy one together. DP has accepted an offer, mine is on the market (with a good amount of interest so far, thankfully). We’ve seen a house we love. The estate agent suggested we put an offer in (even though I’m not proceedable yet) just to be kept in the loop with that house, any other offers they get, etc. Obviously it works in their favour if we do that as they can tell other viewers that they’ve had an offer. Is it worth us doing it, from our own perspective? We really do love the house and would make an offer tomorrow if mine was sold. We’re serious about wanting it and we want the buyers to know that. But we don’t want to accidentally help them sell it to someone else! Not sure how this all works. Is there any world in which a seller would accept an offer from people in our position, and wait for mine to sell? Or is that wishful thinking?

We offered on our house without having sold the previous one. Sellers took it straight off the market for us.

Wow! Was that recently?

I live in Scotland so it might be different here but sellers can accept your offer with conditions, for example a friend of mine had their offer accepted with the condition that they sold their house within four weeks (which they did). However this was in Edinburgh where the market has always been shit hot!

Around a decade ago. During a time period when it was a sellers market. Right now, it is a buyers market so there is a better chance of a sensible offer being accepted.

But the added complication here is that the OP and her DP both need to sell their houses, which obviously complicates the whole process!

Yes. However one is already under offer.
I answered the question about offering while not yet being proceedable. In MN world, no one ever gets such offers accepted. Outside MN world, this is not true. It depends on the market, the agents, the vendors etc. If OP really loves the house, she should offer and make sure hers is priced to sell quickly.

I would wait to sell yours until the other house has SOLD. Trying to sell both at once to tie in with a purchase will just be an absolute nightmare for everyone.

How long has your house been on the market? If it’s had a few viewings and no offer, then it’s likely to take quite a while to sell unless you’re prepared to accept a really low offer.
If it were me, I wouldn’t accept an offer in your circumstances unless both houses were under offer and well under way to exchange. It’s just too risky.

How far away is your do’s house from completing?

Sometimes it's the agent who lies, rather than the seller - but solicitors should get to the bottom of things pretty quickly.

I made a (real) cash offer on a flat once, having no property to sell, but the agent chose to recommend another buyer whom he claimed was also a cash buyer. He hadn't sold, so actually wasn't a cash buyer until he had. The seller accepted his offer.
The seller didn't realise that his buyer had not sold until really late in the transaction, she was desperate to move so that she could get her child into a primary school that September. She pulled out and approached us, accepted our offer and we exchanged and completed in double quick time.
We discovered afterwards the the agent was handling the other buyer's sale and so wanted that to go through as well as the property we wanted.
Personally I think that it is often a real waste of everybody's time if buyers go around making offers before they've at least had an offer on their own property. The transactions are far more likely to fail,

There is no right or wrong in this OP. Some people are game players sadly, you don’t sound like you are. Be honest about your circumstances, you love the house, are close to being proceedable, will not mess about with below asking price offers. All of that goes in your favour. Work on your relationship with the EA too, keep in touch, be super friendly. It all helps.

The pp is right, you are not strictly a cash buyer, but most buyers who don’t need a mortgage think they are. It’s a term people understand to mean ready to go and no borrowing required so not a million miles from where you are. Leave it to the EA to decide how to describe you, don’t stress about it.

There’s no harm in putting your offer in the table and leaving it there. It doesn’t commit anyone to anything but you are no longer one of many anonymous house hunters.

DP and I went on a whim to view a bargain house and ended up having our offer accepted. A quick chat with a mortgage broker shocked us - we were able to borrow 5.5x our salary in addition to the borrowing on the existing houses that we each already owned!

All we needed to do is get consent to let and confirm via the estate agents that the expected rent would cover the mortgage. The total of all three mortgages would be 7x our income which is insane so we intend to sell our properties but being able to borrow such an amount meant we could move quickly.

i found the reply from MyQuaintGoldHedgehog very objectionable it sounded like he was in a “paddy”, it’s simple to give advice in a nice way and be helpful to the OP who has never been in a situation like this before we ALL have to learn we are not born knowing everything. Good luck OP hope it all works out for you both.

I last sold/ bought 18 years ago so going through this now. It’s so stressful.

I didn’t think I could even look when I wasn’t on the market but a property came up. I booked a viewing and they went to closing date/final offer. My offer was accepted, house put on market and sold in 2 weeks, currently waiting on my buyer who has been on market for a while 🙈

Of course you can. It's how chains work, but you really do need to be actively trying to sell your place otherwise the person you're buying off will just go with another offer.

In my experience with selling my Dad's

• offer
• they accept offer
• agree on a time frame for you to sell (our EA suggested one month)
• their house then stays on the market as "sold subject to contract" which means for that month, you can't change your offer and they CAN let other people look round, but CAN'T accept other offers.
• IF you sell during the month (or agreed time frame) the offer stands and you get the house at the agreed price
• IF you don't sell during the month (or agreed time frame) the house becomes "for sale" again, you can, of course, re-offer if you get a buyer, but if they sell to someone else first tough!

I really wouldn't try to sell 2 houses at the same time. It's way too risky, even if you do persuade someone to sell to you. The chain is much more likely to fall apart and the risk for you is that you lose money spent on survey(s), legal fees, etc. Much better to sell one property, both live temporarily in the other, and then sell that one.

Yes I've been confused reading this thread as a Scot

Agree. If you can't both live in yours then do needs to stay somewhere else while you are selling. You'll never get both to tie up.

Ì always used to wait until I had an offer before even started to search. But I did find that there was pressure from the agent/buyer to find somewhere (probably more from the agent in reality.) On the last occasion I did some viewings before receiving an offer which I found helpful.

I’d put the offer in, as they’ve had no offers in 3 months. I accepted an offer from someone who wasn’t yet on market (but close to it) but with the proviso they had an offer on their property within 3 weeks. It has worked out so far, we are midway through the process.

You might have serious intentions but you aren’t in a serious position to proceed. Different things.

We were in this exact position a few years ago. Our offer was accepted as the house had been on the market a while. Then part way through the process we were dropped in favour of a couple with just one property to sell. Several weeks later the EA got back in touch asking if we would be interested again as that couple had dropped out, by which time one of ours was sold. Here we are in that house. Long story short is make an offer. Even if it’s not accepted they will know you are interested and can come back to you if any other buyer can’t go ahead.

We were in this position six years ago. Some say don't even look for a property until you've sold yours but we had some quite specific requirements and didn't want to feel rushed to find something just because we had offers on our own. Also some potential buyers are put off offering if you haven't even started looking and wonder if you're serious about selling.

After 3 years of looking, we finally found a house we loved and immediately put both of ours on the market. Mine got an offer and our seller then accepted our offer but kept the house on the market. We then maxed out our mortgage, used all our savings etc to make ourselves proceedable without the second house sale. The house we wanted was taken off the market at that time.
My DH (then DP) had an offer on his house whilst everything was going through but as we were proceedable without that sale it only counted as one chain for our house purchase.

We moved the day after first lockdown (absolute nightmare!) and my DHs house completed about a month later. It was all very stressful at the time but we absolutely love our beautiful country home and it was all worth it. Good luck OP - hope you get your dream home.

This is very hopeful - did you get stung with the extra stamp duty, and then have to claim it back?