Making an offer on a house before selling mine?

Seen a house I’d like to buy. Will get mine back on rightmove tomorrow.

Question is if I make an offer can I reasonably ask them to take it off the market on the basis I’ll market mine at a lowish price and hopefully find a buyer within 3-4 weeks.

My concern is if i make an offer, the estate agent would continue to show it to other buyers but telling them it already has an offer which from my basic understanding of human psychology would make them more likely to also want to put an offer in.

If that would be the case I guess it might be better to wait until I’ve had an offer on mine?

You can give it a go. But I doubt a seller would want to accept an offer from someone who is not ready to proceed.

Depends where you are. Parents just sold a flat in Bristol. Took a week from advertising to accepting an offer

If an offer is accepted the house normally comes off the market. If the seller is in a chain and keen to move they may accept a lower offer from somebody not in a chain

Got the cart before the horse there, buddy. Put your house on the market, and then you can put in an offer. If you want it to be taken seriously you need to wait until you have an offer yourself.

would make them more likely to also want to put an offer in.

Well, yes and no; gazzumping does happen, but it is sort of frowned upon, and there’s the small matter of surveys. £££££

If I was selling and you made an offer without even having your house on the market, I would be happy to negotiate and agree a price but would not take my house off the market until you had an offer on yours and the “notice of sale” had been sorted with the solicitors.

Just do that, normal practice to make the offer, asking the seller to take their house off the market when you don’t have a buyer for yours is a bit ambitious but why not try. You may find the seller’s agent wants to contact your agent to see how quickly your house may sell to guage how likely you are to complete the purchase.

Fairly standard practice in Scotland but then the whole gazumping thing is incredibly rare up here too.

I had an offer in for this house before marketing my previous one.

I just did this, selling our house and a guy came round who loved it. He wasn’t on the market but I agreed to give him 4 weeks so took it off the market.

This crept to 5 weeks, which was nervy as we had found a dream house.

The seller decided to wait for us (despite two other asking price offers, one cash) as she liked how we were treating our buyer.

So sometimes it can work out. Speak to the local agents to gauge how fast your property will sell, be prepared to take a lower offer if it gets things moving.

In Austria, you make a signed offer for a house. If the seller accepts, that’s the contract for the house. No gazumping possible and if either party pulls out, there’s a fee to pay. No surveys or lengthy legal searches. I made an offer on my house and one week later I had the keys.
OP, put your house for sale. If someone asked me to pull a house from the market without funds in place to buy it, I would politely tell them no. That then cuts off a potential sale from someone who has the funding in place. Might be a bit harsh but it’s a buyers market.

Make the offer and ask – they’ll probably say no (to taking it off the market) but they might if you can convince them that you’ll sell quickly.

as for the ‘if someone knows they have an offer they’re more likely to offer themselves’

I know there’s a degree of ‘they must know something’ hence why everyone buys a particular brand because of the psychology of ‘they can’t all be wrong’ but this isn’t mass purchasing – and do you think the state agent isn’t telling everyone that it is ‘much sought after’ so you’d better offer quick and high anyway?

Will get mine back on rightmove tomorrow

Reading between the lines here but that suggests you will have to drop the asking price a fair bit as it obviously had no takers beforehand?

Reading between the lines here but that suggests you will have to drop the asking price a fair bit as it obviously had no takers beforehand?

Had it briefly on for a couple of weeks well over a year ago, but took it off due to possible redundancy (that didn’t happen in the end)

Having a property to sell puts you in a strong position.

If your house isn’t on the market yet and you haven’t chosen an agent, ask the seller’s agent to quote for selling your place. If your house is saleable they’ll be very keen.

Keeps the chain nice and simple, and means that you are both a buyer and seller with the same agent, so in their interests to keep you happy (and also get your offer accepted)

I did this when i put an offer in on our current house. Said that the agent could sell our house, on condition of our offer being accepted.

Double commission for them, offer accepted for us 😉

Although – watch out for the solicitor being the same one – folk have been reprimanded at the least in Scotland for acting for both seller and buyer. Conflict of interest. More a problem with one-man band firms though – we signed an indemnity when we bought this house, as it was being sold by our solicitor’s firm.

Thinking back, we have bought at least one house before selling (moving from flat to end terrace) and we were certainly well on our way to buying current house before we had sold our own house in Edinburgh..

Put your own house on the market with the agent selling the house you want to buy. make it clear you are only selling to buy THIS house. The prospect of two commissions may get you some favourable treatment.

Just done exactly what you’re asking. Our offer’s in and the seller has given us 4 weeks to get ours sold. We’ve decided to sell with the estate agent who are handling the sale of the property we’ve offered on.

Having spoken to the seller they’re not in a hurry to get out – they are yet to find a house to buy – so it kinda suits everyone.

I’m on with an online agent at the moment, but sounds like a good plan to instruct the same agent that is selling the house I want to sell ours too.

If your house isn’t even on the market it’s a pretty sodding pointless offer.

We are selling Atm and have had similar offers but don’t consider the house sold.

Cold hard cash, or as close to it as poss in our stupid system, wins.

Depends where you are. Parents just sold a flat in Bristol. Took a week from advertising to accepting an offer

But equally there was no point in us even going to see anything in Bristol until we’d accepted an offer on ours – for every house there are ten buyers!

We were in the same position so put a low offer in just to show we were interested but really we were stalling for time. Turns out the seller was desperate to sell so accepted the offer. We put our house on with the same agent and behind the scenes the agent and seller came up with the plan to buy our house then sell it on! To be fair our old house was a starter home that did and do sell very easily so they resold ours before our purchase of theirs was complete. We moved out to our new house and the keys went to the new, new buyer! 😯 😀

If I were selling….. This.

If I was selling and you made an offer without even having your house on the market, I would be happy to negotiate and agree a price but would not take my house off the market until you had an offer on yours and the “notice of sale” had been sorted with the solicitors.