Is this the quickest sale ever?

[suki1964]

Ok so I know technically Im not sold yet but I rang the estate agent on Tuesday . He came around to look around and to discuss marketing and price

Hour later he rang and asked if we could do a viewing within the hour as he had a buyer looking, so we said yes

Wednesday he came back to do the measurements, photos and video

Halfway through he takes a call, can he bring the viewers back without us there - sure

4pm Thursday hes back saying buyers have offered 5k over , are in position to proceed , everyone in their chain is , my new house I have on reserve will be ready in January, will I accept

Not even a brochure published and the house sold STC

We only thought about moving a week ago and now it seems we are

Very similar here- decided to move mid April. Agent had someone lined up to view immediately who made a very good offer which we accepted- all done before we'd even had photos taken. We exchanged in June and completed in July.

Why might I be a chump?

Im downsizing and the perfect place has come up - new build- small development - in the perfect location for us and they are flying off the shelves off plan so I had to move fast as only three left - at least the one we have nabbed has roof on and windows going in today :)

Offers over are the norm here. I knew how little I was willing to accept . We agreed to get in within a reasonable search bracket so it would reach more people and then let the bids commence. I could have gone 70k more - and risk it taking time to sell. Also I would be competing against show home new properties , where as mine is 30 years old and has a few rough edges

Mine is also very rural - no services - it takes a certain type of buyer .

The chain is complete , all solicitors have sight of the monies

Im walking away with a huge profit - 250k and will still be mortgage free with a lot less house to keep clean and heated and pension funded a lot better

No chump about it

Ours was like that in 2006 but it was a fair price for the house in the area, it was just a sought after location and houses usually went like hot cakes.

Well, he acted in a way to keep your house out of view. Who knows what you could have got for it a week later?

Not quite as quick as yours - a friend's elderly father sold his bungalow to the first person who viewed. The viewer offered the asking price and agreed the deal there and then on a handshake. At the time bungalows were in high demand so no way was the property undervalued

The legalities obviously then followed, plus the widowed mother of the viewer then came to view and was very happy with her quick-acting son!

And you don’t have to keep the house tidy for estate agent visits. Win win

I'd be a bit suspicious too. Are they cash buyers? Sometimes folk do this and then want you to drop the price just before completion.

@Ifailed

I was coming on to say that I remember a Golders Green / Temple Fortune estate agent saying they had a property exchanged ( and maybe completed ? ) in 48 hours.

Edited to say: that was in the 90's too.

we only thought about moving last week

but also

so I had to move fast as only three left so you have offered and accepted on a property @suki1964 ?

I would definitely prefer to view without the sellers there. That's normal where I am. Anything else I would find very awkward.

Sounds like an established estate agent scam. Give you a low valuation, get a mate to offer over it, sold without even putting it to market. If it’s going to sell that easily they’d want it to go to market.

We had a very quick sale - the estate agent had someone on their books who'd been struggling to find the right property and ours fit their bill. They were our one and only viewing, two days after the estate agent had taken photos, offered asking price straight away, no chain. All went through like clockwork!
(I did say to DH after that we should have put a higher price - he was worried at the time that our price was too high! And other similar properties in the street sold for similar/less though so I think we were just lucky that this particular buyer had spent so long looking, they weren't prepared to mess about haggling etc)

That's great, op! Hope it all goes well x
Not as fast, but I saw the ad for this house on the friday afternoon, booked a viewing on the Saturday afternoon and made an offer that was accepted on monday afternoon 😀
We were in rented, mip agreed and keen to get going.
We moved in 6 weeks later.

You’ve been had mate

Definitely get more prices! Last time we sold we had some similar figures then the last guy came in 40k more, we went with him and he managed to get us 5k over so we were 45k better off

Nice one! When we sold my dad's house, we didn't even get as far as an estate agent, beyond having it valued. We were there every weekend clearing it, and we arrived one Saturday to find a letter through the door saying 'If you're interested in selling, please give me a call.' Called straight away, fella said he was the proprietor of the business just opposite and could come straight round for a look, and we shook hands on the full asking price within half an hour of opening his letter. It took a bit longer for the solicitors to communicate, obviously, but we were braced for months on the market (really old house, lots of work needed, but my dad needed the sale to cover nursing home fees) so it was such a relief!

A previous neighbour of mine worked in a vair posh firm of London conveyancing solicitors. A very expensive Mayfair-type house went on the market in the morning, seen by some insanely rich oil magnate before lunch, all paperwork literally walked round between purchaser, vendor, bank etc, and completion mid afternoon. That's pretty darn quick.

DS had the agents round. They took measurements etc. An hour later he was at the station about to board a train and the agents called to say they had a viewing. He rushed home, got a full asking price offer within an hour and it all went through without any problems. This was recently with a poor market for sellers.

Hi OP, have you answered the question about the number of valuations that you obtained?

Not always. Plenty of people want to sell off market for privacy reasons- at the top end probably only about half the houses sold are ever marketed. You need to know the agent though- I wouldn't do this with an agent I didn't know and trust.

Actually this sounds like the EA doing a great job - I bought my place like this last year. Its sale was about to fall through because of a time-waster and the vendors were close to giving up, EA knew I'd sold mine and that he'd shown me something similar...he rang and said do you want a quick look before they take it off the market later today. I went, offered later that day and job done.

A good EA isn't just someone who does house tours, they know what their buyers want, who is serious and in a position to move quickly...and if they can match that to a house at whatever stage of the process, then surely that's good for everyone, no?

And all this fretting about "you could have got another £5k" - with a permanently unpredictable market and the fact that you're going to be paying this off over 25 years with a mortgage, the most important thing is someone who wants to sell and someone who wants to buy...£5k is a detail that will be lost in time, possibly even by moving day.

Im downsizing and the perfect place has come up - new build- small development - in the perfect location for us and they are flying off the shelves off plan so I had to move fast as only three left - at least the one we have nabbed has roof on and windows going in today

so a week ago you were not thinking of moving but now found somewhere, had the offer accepted and accepted an offer on yours .

So sounds like the property you have bought was also a very very quick sale @suki1964 ?

MIL's house wasn't quite that quick, but we had a full asking price offer (which we accepted) within the same week the agent was instructed, and before the for sale sign went up, and in fact, even before it was listed on Right Move.

Not "too cheap" either as we had three estate agents to give opinions the week before, and we also did our own research on Rightmove sold prices for the street. We achieved the highest "sold" price for comparable houses on the same street, and it wasn't particularly better, i.e. no extensions, etc., we just presented/staged it well.

The guy who bought it had been looking for a while in that area and was known to the EA who basically gave him a call immediately after we signed the EA agreement, viewed it next day and offered after second viewing the day later. Full asking price offer!

Houses on the street since then (2 years ago) have sold for less but had been marketed at the same or higher price (presumably because they saw what we'd got which they thought was "market rate").

Sometimes, it really is "right place, right time" rather than being under-valued. Also helped that no similar/comparable houses on the market in that location at that time, so no competition.

I'm not sure either, @suki1964 why some posters think you are a 'chump'..?
Sounds perfect to me, especially as the quickest house sale I ever had took about 5 months, (excluding conveyancing) & the longest, years! I'd have snatched their hands off, too! Mabe some folk are just cynical?
Enjoy your new house when all's gone through!

Good luck OP x
We accepted an offer within 24 hours . 2 weeks later the chain collapsed . Got another offer within 48 hours . 2 months later the buyer sadly died . We were 6 months in the end . Still got over asking price though yours is obviously a good buy x