Making an offer on a house before you have sold your own.......

Well, you can, but its pointless tbh. if i was selling, and you made an offer, its not really an ofer because youre not in a position to proceed. as such, it would stay on the market and be sold to someone else unless you sold yours quickly and could then proceed on mine.

What Nick says. Until you've sold your place you are not proceedable, and no buyer in their right mind takes a property off the market due to an offer from an unproceedable buyer. Therefore the property continues to be marketed, to be viewed and to be open to offers until you've sold your house. So there's little or no advantage of holding off until you've sold before putting in an offer.

Yes, I agree.

I'm an estate agent and have a great house for sale at the moment. We've had countless interested parties, but all of them had yet to sell their own houses so we refused their attempts to make an offer. An offer conditional on the sale of the buyer's home is worthless at the moment over here and judging by what Nick says, in England too.

Sorry!

Thank you for your honest opinions - I didn't think the offer would be worth a thing to be frank - it would just make the seller aware that we are keen to buy the house. The estate agents don't seem to mind at all that we haven't sold - which is strange as they don't make any commission until the sale is complete I would imagine?

Hi there, I am an estate agent too. To be honest, I am surprised that the estate agents are pressurising you into making an offer - we wouldn't recommend a vendor accept any offer from an incomplete chain, particularly as things are at the moment.

In a different, more stable market, we would sometimes recommend that a vendor accepts an offer from an incomplete chain and taken the house in question off the market for a period of time to allow the buyers to sell their own, but this is usually for houses that a tricky to sell or don't have a large potential buyer base.

Having said all that, there's no harm in expressing your interest to that agents, but you would be in a far better negotiating position if you had sold your own, so from that point of view you might want to hold tight.

If it's any help, though, the fact that the current market is making it hard for you to sell will also make it hard for them to sell.

We saw a house in the street we've always wanted to live in back in March. We were desperate not to lose it, put ours on the market immediately, took it off after three months of no activity, waited a few weeks whilst deciding what to do, put it back on with a different estate agent - and still got an offer on ours in time to offer on theirs. So you never know.

thanks cjb - interesting to hear another perspective from an estate agent... My H is keen for us not to "play our hand" [eyeroll] so to speak.. so just in case our property is reduced in price to sell it and we try to recoup some of the loss from the house we are buying by offering a lower amount.

I'd agree with your H. Leave them. If no one shows any interest by the time you get an offer on your place they could be TOTALLY desperate. Whereas if they know from now onwards that someone wants it, it will buoy their confidence.

Just make sure your house is priced reasonably (sellers over here are so greedy at the moment!) and your agent is good.

I think the other agent is encouraging you to make the offer because it makes them look good. They can say to the sellers "well, we did get you an offer!" when they complain that their house hasn't sold. Ignore them.

No problem. To be honest, recouping your loss from the other property is perfectly normal behaviour at the moment - it's the way the market works - you get less for yours, you pay less for theirs... and hopefully they pay less for the one they're buying and so on and so.... It works quite well as long as all sellers have realistic expectations and realistic market values... it's when people have an inflated view that it falls down.

Good luck with finding your own buyer - then you will be gold dust!

We have been offered a ridiculously high amount for our house, but the putative purchaser has only just put their own property on the market this week. If they give me a decent sized non-refundable deposit, then I'll take my property off to give them a chance to sell (we don't have chains in scotland the way you do in england, so I could also conclude missives on the back of a 4 or 5 month entry date and charge penalty interest on any default). So basically, unless you're willing to pay way over the odds (ie if it's your dream property) then I don;t think the vendor is going to be interested.

As the others have said, really. But if I were you I would like the vendors to know that I was interested, so I'd just be honest and ask the EA to explain your situation, and that you'll be putting in an offer as soon as yours is under offer.

Good luck.

It is actually pretty common in Scotland to do it that way, and often when it is a seller's market it works pretty well. When we were selling our house most people who came to see it didn't have their houses on the market. However most people seemed to also have this very strange delusional idea, that despite the credit crunch looming (this was the end of last year) that no matter how long everyone else's house took to sell, their's was so marvellous it would be snapped up in the blink of an eye (yeah right).

I however didn't have the nerve to do it that way (having worked as a conveyancer and seen things going tits up or right to the wire, and it was nerve wracking enough dealing with it in a work context never mind in my own private business) and so we sold ours before we started putting offers in on others. I also feel it gave us an edge that we had sold and could move quickly as opposed to someone whose house wasn't even on the market yet.

I think in the current economic climate, to buy without having sold is bloody madness.

I have to agree with everyone else. However, we're selling at the moment and have had a few people view who have been non-proceedable, but they've expressed to our agents that they'll be making an offer as soon as they're in a position to. As a seller it's good to know that there are interested parties so you could always say that you like it, and when you can proceed you will offer.

We did and it wasn't accepted until our house was sold which was 3 days later - its possible for it to be ok

I agree with that comment, even though there's little you can do with the info, it stops you giving up all hope ? We have had 3 second viewing where they all went on to put offers on other places ? citing the reason being the 3rd bedroom is too small. Last Saturday one of our viewings stated that she was really interested but not in a position to offer. She's selling with the same agency as us, so really it's doucle incentive to the agent to get hers shifted ?

Julesgirl, you've only been on the market for 2 weeks (though in sales years it feels like 2 years I'm sure), the market is slow and will take time, so be patient. We've been on for 10 weeks now. We had a flurry of viewers within the first few weeks, then it went deadly quiet. Then we had 2 viewers last weekend, one Thursday, and one yesterday. It's a fickle time ?

It depends whether you're purchase of the new property is going to be dependent on the sale of the old house.

We offered on our dream house before selling ours - we had to persuade her and persuade her that we weren't in a chain and could move independently.

We still haven't sold our original house but are renting it out

?? How did you get to meet most of my clients? ??.

Ho hum, well, here I am sat at my desk and my one and only appointment for the day has just cancelled... boo, hiss.

It was really annoying, we'd say to them "so, is your own on the market then?" and they'd be like "ooh no, we're seeing what's available first, but ours will sell like <clicks fingers> THAT". Making us feel like plebs cos ours took 5 months to sell in the end. ?