Sell or buy first (Scotland)?

[NannyPear]

Just that really. We have a couple of estate agents coming next week to value the house and chat about putting it on the market as soon as possible.

In the meantime, is there any point in viewing other houses? We're in Glasgow and looking at East Ren where a lot of homes go to closing dates within a couple of weeks of being listed, so if we view and like something now then we'd likely be making an offer with our home still not sold.

Everything I see online tells me an offer wouldn't even be considered if the people still had to sell their own home, yet my friend's offer was accepted at closing date prior to her flat even being on the market a couple of years ago?

Bit concerned about selling our house and having no where to go, but similarly don't want to fall in love with a house that we wouldn't even be considered for!

Is renting an option for you? We’re renting in Lanarkshire and are waiting for our house sale to go through having put us in a good position to buy the next house. We’ve done it a couple of times before but appreciate you are paying for the cost of two houses at any one time.

Sorry, think I’ve answered a question that you didn’t ask!

No, renting is definitely something I want to avoid for multiple reasons including the fact that DS starts P1 next year so don't want to risk renting when we are enrolling for school as that could end up messy if we buy out of that catchment. And we have 2 dogs which makes renting almost impossible anyway!

I do wonder how the majority of people go about it though. It's also a very unknown time to be moving but we were always planning on moving now with DS due to start school next year, and I really don't like our current catchment school so I'm powering ahead anyway!

How desirable is your current property and how much are you willing to let it go for against valuation? We sold 9 years ago - which is obviously eons away in terms of house pricing but actually was very similar in terms of the economic situation - and if we'd been prepared to let ours go for significantly under home report value we would have sold it first week.

However we weren't, so it took a year, and we sold first, rented then bought.

Very desirable location and it's uncommon for houses to go for less than the home report. But if I had to sell it for less in order for the sale of a house we had an offer accepted on to go through then I'd be fine with that.

In popular areas it is normal to put in an offer subject to sale

Thanks user!

It also depends how much in demand your house is. We accepted the offer from our buyer even though their place hadn't been sold at the time - but their lawyer had informed ours that their property had a few notes of interest already and was likely to be under offer within a week or so. We had already moved into our new house so we could afford to wait for them to sort out the sale of their flat

Last year DH and I made an offer on a house subject to selling ours. It all worked out but we did get into a chain as our buyers' offer on our house was also subject to them selling their flat. The people we bought from were moving into a new build, so there seemed plenty of time for everyone to complete paperwork. However our buyer's buyer took an age to get their mortgage paperwork finalised. It took them until two days before the moving in date. Apparently this is now quite common in Scotland. It was stressful but saved the expense and inconvenience of moving into temporary rented accommodation.

We've gone for selling first - central Edinburgh selling, buying further out. Current house is a bit unusual so we weren't sure how quickly it would go. Looking like it'll be under offer today though, fingers crossed

Good luck @StatisticallyChallenged -I'm hopefully about to go on the market in Edinburgh too - I heard the market is very strong just now. Would interested to hear how you get on, if you are happy to share.

Offers subject to sale seem to be standard in popular parts of Edinburgh. I think it takes much longer to find somewhere to buy and have an offer accepted than it does to sell.

That's us now under offer - a week from going on the market, almost to the minute. Ended up going for 6.5% more than the home report, clean offer, buyer flexible with long entry date if we need it. I'm more than happy with that tbh, trying to keep the place viewing clean with kids is a nightmare. We had 2 offers submitted yesterday (from only 4 viewers) so we told them both to do best offers by noon.

That's fab statistically challenged! You must be relieved it went ok. Hope all goes smoothly from here. Definitely don't want a dragged out process of viewing with 2 kids and the dogs turning my house into a tip at any opportunity...

Thanks for the replies so far too. Will go ahead with viewings when houses pop up.

Even prior to covid-19 it was better to sell and then buy.We put in an offer at closing date and despite being the higher offer they sold to someone else as we hadn't sold yet.

And that was in East Ren. There's always a lot of demand for houses here, so you'll be putting yourself at a disadvantage by not selling first.

That's fair @grafittiqueen. We are looking at East Ren so know the competition is tough. I'm cool with waiting, as there seems to be a fair amount of properties popping up so hopefully we won't end up homeless! I'll try force myself off of Rightmove in case I fall in love with something I won't have a shoe in for as we've not sold yet!

Though I do wonder if there will be less people putting in offers who have already sold now, given the fact house sales halted for so long. Maybe in a few months it will be back to the usual way of things. Who knows!