Should I put my property onto the open market before I've found a new home to purchase?
When you decide you want to move your first dilemma is a 'Chicken and Egg' situation: Do you put your house on the market first or should you find a property to buy first?
Unless you can buy your new home without selling your current property then the answer is most definitely YES! Based on the fact that you can only buy your new home once you've sold your current home, you should most definitely place your own property onto the open market first
Why not find somewhere to buy first?
- The obvious answer is that you cannot proceed with your new purchase until you've sold your current property. Your time and energy will be wasted in trying to find the new home that you can't yet buy. If you did this and agreed an offer with a seller just imagine if a few weeks later you get told that your new home has now been sold to someone else who is in a position to buy the house immediately. All of your time and energy has been wasted, plus it might affect you on an emotional level.
- You will be agreeing a price with the owners of your new home based on what you 'think' you can sell your own property for but you may find out, later down the line, that no one is offering you the amount of money that you were hoping to sell for. You will then have to ask the owners of your new potential home if they would accept a lesser amount and they may refuse. Once again a lot of wasted time, energy, money and stress.
- By finding a property to buy first you then put yourself under pressure to sell your own property quickly and this often leads to you selling for a lot less money as you now need to find a buyer quickly.
- Due to the urgency and pressure you have created by finding a property to buy first, you might decide to list your house for sale with two or three different firms of estate agents. This type of marketing causes its own problems as a Buyer who sees a property listed with more than one agency, generally thinks that the owner is desperate to sell or there might be something wrong with the property. Plus a war has begun between the agents to agree a sale with you first. What then happens is they are all trying to get you to accept their buyers offer which most of the time causes the seller to accept an offer from the buyer who they thought was the best buyer but later turns out not to be - or that buyer was the highest bidder to secure your property and on the day of exchanging contracts, they turn around and say we will proceed but at a lower price and due to your position, you accept their new lower offer and sell your property for a lot less than the price agreed.