Buying a house (and renting)

I just rang an estate agent to ask to view a house. They asked me if my property was on the market, I said not quite but would be any day now. "Oh sorry, but we can't book viewings in until yours is actually on the market, call us back then"

What the strawberry float?

Moggy wrote:I just rang an estate agent to ask to view a house. They asked me if my property was on the market, I said not quite but would be any day now. "Oh sorry, but we can't book viewings in until yours is actually on the market, call us back then"

What the strawberry float?

Probably to cut down on time wasters. A friend of mine and his wife pretend they're looking to buy and arrange viewings of houses just so they can nose around them.

These are the same people who when they were trying to sell their own house, got pissed off when someone would view but not put an offer in.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Moggy wrote:I just rang an estate agent to ask to view a house. They asked me if my property was on the market, I said not quite but would be any day now. "Oh sorry, but we can't book viewings in until yours is actually on the market, call us back then"

What the strawberry float?

Probably to cut down on time wasters. A friend of mine and his wife pretend they're looking to buy and arrange viewings of houses just so they can nose around them.

These are the same people who when they were trying to sell their own house, got pissed off when someone would view but not put an offer in.

Time wasters would be annoying but it's not great to piss people off before they even view the place. I hope that place stays on the market for years with nobody even viewing it.

It was a while ago but I remember talking to an estate agent who told me that the majority of people looking at houses had no interest of buying, they're just want to snoop around other people's home.

That's a really weird hobby.

Moggy wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:

Moggy wrote:I just rang an estate agent to ask to view a house. They asked me if my property was on the market, I said not quite but would be any day now. "Oh sorry, but we can't book viewings in until yours is actually on the market, call us back then"

What the strawberry float?

Probably to cut down on time wasters. A friend of mine and his wife pretend they're looking to buy and arrange viewings of houses just so they can nose around them.

These are the same people who when they were trying to sell their own house, got pissed off when someone would view but not put an offer in.

Time wasters would be annoying but it's not great to piss people off before they even view the place. I hope that place stays on the market for years with nobody even viewing it.

Yeah it's annoying but a pretty common thing sadly. I remember being refused viewings for places because we hadn't sold ours yet. They didn't just want it on the market, they actually wanted us to have already sold our house before they would agree to a viewing!

The key term you'll hear a hell of a lot is "proceedable position", everyone in the housing market is obsessed with being in a proceedable position and whether or not you are will dictate the degree to which you get treated like garbage!

That's mad. I understand it but surely both the agent and seller want to do everything they can to sell the property.

I don't think it was like that around a decade ago when I bought my house, but I just bought the first house I viewed so can't be sure.

To be fair, if you get into a chain with multiple people who need to find buyers it can take forever to move forward and it's always liable to collapse and you need to start again. It's easier to just have people who are ready to move forward so I do get it.

You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

How can you put an offer down for a new place if you don't even know what your budget is? I find it absurd that people go looking at houses without knowing that basic information.

The last house I bought, the estate agent selling the new house called the estate agent who sold mine at the time to confirm I was good for the money.

I'm 100% behind people needing to be in an advanced position to be putting an offer in, but it's a bit much as a requirement for just looking at a house.

If anything that level of restriction is likely to put the chain under additional risk as you are delaying/putting off potential buyers

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

It's a bit of a ballache having people coming to look at your house though isn't? You need to make sure it's tidy and it limits what you can do for that time. Only wanting serious buyers you'll move forward with seems reasonable to me.

Jenuall wrote:I'm 100% behind people needing to be in an advanced position to be putting an offer in, but it's a bit much as a requirement for just looking at a house.

If anything that level of restriction is likely to put the chain under additional risk as you are delaying/putting off potential buyers

But they aren't potential buyers if they don't have the money to buy. It causes them and every person after them in the chain to not be able to guarantee selling their current property and buying the next.

At best you see a property you fall in love with and miss out on because you aren't able to put a realistic offer in at the time. At worst you cost people hundreds of pounds in legal fees, months of wasted time and thousands of pounds in any property price increases.

It's not that difficult to wait to sell your property (if you have one) and then get a mortgage offer checked out and approved. It saves everyone time, money and needless stress.

Everything to do with moving house is a ballache, there's no point resisting it!

It's a risk/reward balancing act like anything - if you're too restrictive in who you let see your place then that limits your market and potentially has a knock on effect on how long it takes for you to agree a sale. All those people who hadn't sold yet might go off to a more approachable seller, like what they see and proceed further all whilst you are waiting for "the one"

There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

BID0 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I'm 100% behind people needing to be in an advanced position to be putting an offer in, but it's a bit much as a requirement for just looking at a house.

If anything that level of restriction is likely to put the chain under additional risk as you are delaying/putting off potential buyers

But they aren't potential buyers if they don't have the money to buy. It causes them and every person after them in the chain to not be able to guarantee selling their current property and buying the next.

At best you see a property you fall in love with and miss out on because you aren't able to put a realistic offer in at the time. At worst you cost people hundreds of pounds in legal fees, months of wasted time and thousands of pounds in any property price increases.

It's not that difficult to wait to sell your property (if you have one) and then get a mortgage offer checked out and approved. It saves everyone time, money and needless stress.

See above, the reverse argument stands - each house in the chain being more restrictive about who the allow to see their home is limiting and potentially slowing the rate at which the whole chain progresses.

If you've got proceedable buyers banging down your door and already making offers then sure, be picky about who you let view your house, but if that's not the case then why wouldn't you be more open to viewings?

Grumpy David wrote:There's a lot to be said for the Scottish method of buying / selling houses.

You get a Scottish Home Report which confirms the market value so you don't have the risk of the lender down valuing the home. You can buy over this amount but if it's say 200k value and you want to offer 205k but have a 10% deposit, it's 20k + 5k extra, rather than then the lender giving you 90% of 205k which does take some of the heat out the market.

It also is a Homebuyer Report, not the useless mortgage valuation report so you get a lengthy document to review. And it's much trickier to pull out of a purchase after your offer is accepted.

Plus they abolished the much hated leasehold almost 20 years ago. The UK introduced Commonhold around a similar time but it never took off (at the very least it should have been the required process for all new build blocks of flats) and virtually doesn't exist.

This all sounds extremely smart to me. What's the catch?

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

BID0 wrote:

Moggy wrote:

BID0 wrote:You should have your current place sold AND have a mortgage offered by a bank before you go looking at a house and put an offer in otherwise it can cause a chain to collapse.

Exactly, people should sell their homes and be living in the streets before moving to another place!

I don't know what that's meant to mean?

You don't move out until contracts are exchanged ready for the completion stage which normally takes 1-2 weeks for moving day.

You said we should have a place sold before looking at another property.

It's ridiculous to restrict viewings to people who already have an offer on the table. I understand people don't want to be in lengthy chains, but the process will fall down just as easily if people are not allowed to even view a property until they've got a buyer for their property.

Jenuall wrote:

BID0 wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I'm 100% behind people needing to be in an advanced position to be putting an offer in, but it's a bit much as a requirement for just looking at a house.

If anything that level of restriction is likely to put the chain under additional risk as you are delaying/putting off potential buyers

But they aren't potential buyers if they don't have the money to buy. It causes them and every person after them in the chain to not be able to guarantee selling their current property and buying the next.

At best you see a property you fall in love with and miss out on because you aren't able to put a realistic offer in at the time. At worst you cost people hundreds of pounds in legal fees, months of wasted time and thousands of pounds in any property price increases.

It's not that difficult to wait to sell your property (if you have one) and then get a mortgage offer checked out and approved. It saves everyone time, money and needless stress.

See above, the reverse argument stands - each house in the chain being more restrictive about who the allow to see their home is limiting and potentially slowing the rate at which the whole chain progresses.

If you've got proceedable buyers banging down your door and already making offers then sure, be picky about who you let view your house, but if that's not the case then why wouldn't you be more open to viewings?

At some point the person buying will need to have sold their property and have a mortgage approved. It's better that you get your buyer to do that before you let them see your house and potentially strawberry float up things for you. There is no time saved in letting people view your property and blinding putting down an offer they can't afford to make.

You're more likely to move within 3-4 months than 6-12 if at least the basic financials are sorted.