Need to downsize - also wary of moving!

Don't join the system then. There must be other agents.

My 96/97 year old was bullied into moving out when her new house wasn't ready. It cost £1000s as she was in a rental flat charged by the month and then a hotel. It went on for ages with her things in storage.
Once she had the keys she moved in and all the rewiring etc went on around her - she said she'd rather camp out the rethink stay in a hotel!

You are employing them, paying them hefty fees. Take your business elsewhere.
If they are taking this attitude from the go get it’s only going to get worse down the line.
Go in with the attitude this is what I want and this is what I’m going to do, do you want my money or not

Ask yourself " who is in charge here?"
It is not the estate agents.

If the agent won't let you look round properties, I'd write to the owner, outlining the situation and ask for a viewing.
They can only say no!.
You have the address of anything you might want to look at.

Obviously do a drive-by first.

If you write a letter "to the householder" on the computer you can copy it for the next house without a lot of effort.

This is absurd, how can an agent say such a thing?
How would they even know if you booked an appointment to view a property with another agent?
I think you have got your wires crossed.
It is not ethical to put in an offer until you have a “memorandum of sale” but it’s fine to view.
We are currently for sale and have interest, we have viewed a few properties but told the agents to let the vendors know our position, had they declined the viewing that’s fine.

The whole process of house buying/selling can be a bit of a nightmare. We've just been through this ourselves, so I speak from experience! We had many, many viewings of our property, and a couple of offers from people who hadn't yet sold their own property, as the agent has a duty to pass on any offers that they receive, regardless of the position that the potential buyers are in. We simply said we'd keep the offer in mind, and if/when they had accepted an offer on their own property, and they were in a better position to move forward, they could come back to us. One couple did come back to us shortly afterwards, after accepting an offer on their house, but, by that stage, we'd already accepted an offer from someone who was in a position to move forward.

Your estate agent can not dictate who you can, and can't, allow to view your property, regardless of what stage the potential buyers are at in the process. If you don't mind having people view your house before they've accepted an offer on their own house, that's up to you. Of course, it's always preferable that whoever views your property has already accepted an offer on their own house. But, as I said, we could've had a potential sale from the earlier offer we received, had we not accepted another offer already.

Likewise, once you have your house on the market, estate agents can't stop you from viewing a property, unless the vendors have specifically said that they don't want any viewings from people who haven't already accepted an offer/sold.

In an ideal world, of course it would be better if all potential purchasers had already accepted an offer, and all vendors had already had their offer accepted on the property they wish to buy, but it simply doesn't work like that. Obviously, offers from first-time buyers (as long as they have a mortgage offer in place), or cash buyers who aren't reliant upon the sale of a property, makes the whole process a little easier.

We were cash buyers (not reliant of the sale of our property to purchase the next), so our purchase process was far easier, and as our vendors were also in the same position, that all went very smoothly, I'm glad to say!

Although, twice, we did have two properties we wanted to purchase fall through for various reasons ... one of them on the day before exchange of contracts! So, to say it's been a very stressful process, is an understatement, but we got there in the end!

If you're not happy with what your estate agent is telling you at this stage, I'd choose another agent, if I were you. Good luck with it all!

I think there is a lot of competition between estate agents in the South so I would use that to your advantage. You should be able to see any property you wish to as long as you have your own home on the market.. that is normal procedure..

It is a very stressful process but don't be bullied. Change your estate agent and be very clear with the new ones that you will sell in your own time.. and wait until you find a property that you like. I would not rent and put your things in storage..

good luck and don't lose heart

Im interested in the posts where people ssy "estate agents cant do that" "you should bec allowed to view sny property you wish". Where are they getting their views from as what the OP says is exactly the situation out there right now. Its slso rsther tude to suggest she is getting her wires ctossed. They can not have bought/dold a property in a long time. Things have certainly changed and agents are behaving exactly as described.

petra

“You are employing them, paying them hefty fees. Take your business elsewhere.
If they are taking this attitude from the go get it’s only going to get worse down the line.
Go in with the attitude this is what I want and this is what I’m going to do, do you want my money or not“

Absolutely agree 100%! You are the buyer (and incidentally, it’s a buyers market at the moment, so you have a lot of clout).

There is no way an estate agent should have instructed you in that way. Change your estate agent pronto!
I live in the South East too, and have been very happy with Finns estate agents. I don’t know where you are, but the Finns I use is in Sandwich. You seem to have a lot of sound advice from others, so all I would add (from experience) is, don’t let anyone rush you into anything! This is a big decision and you need to be sure that you know what you want.
Best of luck!

We bought 3 years ago when the market was very busy and you had to either have a buyer for your house or funds in place/ mortgage offer before you could view anywhere. I can see the argument for both points of view as this does do away with people just coming to look for a nose round.
After my Dad died we were trying to sell his flat and had an offer from someone who hadnt put their home up for sale - it was a worthless offer as they werent able to proceed. We accepted the offer but said we weren’t stopping viewings until he had a buyer. We ended up renting the flat out

Shelflife

Ask yourself " who is in charge here?"
It is not the estate agents.

You'd think so wouldn't you but we have twice accepted offers on out bungalow within a couple of days of putting it on the market in April or 2022 and then April 2024 before we would be allowed to view properties we would like to buy only to see the ever lengthening chain eventually collapse as the people at the front of the chain become impatient and those at the back face the difficulties of the feeding frenzy caused by increasing prices. And don't get me started on agents that advertise "offers in excess of"....

When we moved we had a caravan on a seasonal pitch
We ended up with furniture and contents in storage and living in the caravan for 2 weeks. It was because our buyer refused to move our completion date and threatened to pull out. The house owners of the house we were buying booked a last minute cruise for their anniversary.
I actually loved the caravan site and it enabled us to move in slowly over a month, unpacking boxes one at a time from the storage. We didn't have much furniture as the washing machine broke just before we left, the freezer was integrated, we left the range oven,fitted wardrobes and gave our leather sofas to my daughter.

Sell your house first, then look for your next and possibly final home at your leisure and as a cash buyer.

Good luck

Tennisnan

Im interested in the posts where people ssy "estate agents cant do that" "you should bec allowed to view sny property you wish". Where are they getting their views from as what the OP says is exactly the situation out there right now. Its slso rsther tude to suggest she is getting her wires ctossed. They can not have bought/dold a property in a long time. Things have certainly changed and agents are behaving exactly as described.

Yes they are countrywide!

Take your business elsewhere.

The OP has stated that it's the position of the agents in her area full stop. If that's the situation, whether right or wrong, it's what the local agents seem to have agreed between themselves and they're sticking to it, probably makes life a lot easier for them but no help to the OP.
Even going to an agent out of the area won't help if viewings have to be arranged via local agents.

You can't put a 'proper' offer on a new place without having the funds lined up, even if that means you're in a 'chain' of buyers and sellers however, there's no legal reason you can't look at properties before you get a buyer as long as you aren't misleading the sellers about your position. We move house a lot, restless souls, but when we put something on the market we have been astounded by people who are really just looking to pass the time out of curiosity with no intention of actually buying the place and maybe that's what the agent is concerned about. When this sort of viewing happens it is upsetting as it means we have spent a couple of days cleaning and tidying, finding somewhere to go while the viewing takes place - which in the past meant sorting out the kids and all their toys etc - and generally disrupting our lives for nothing. I can understand why people may not want someone coming round who isn't in a position to put an offer on their house. In the past, with small children, we have stipulated that buyers must be 'proceedable' before we allow them to view. This comes from us not the estate agent and would not be reasonable as a blanket rule as properties might be uninhabited, or open for all day block viewings and it wouldn't always cause problems for you to look round. If we were looking to buy I'd probably take a dim view of the inflexible attitude taken by your agent and find another one. Before doing that I would ask the agent to explain their logic though and if it's because your house isn't anywhere close to being in a position to go onto the market and will take months or even years to prepare for viewings - cluttered, needing maintenance, updating etc, then the agent may have a point, it may be a buyers market but you will still need to find a buyer before anyone will accept an offer and take their property off the market. I agree it's possible you'll lose a buyer as people wont wait in a chain indefinitely but unless your place will sell really quickly what better option is there if you seriously want to move? One of the problems seems to be that many landlords and now selling vacant properties, so quick moves can happen and you are competing with that. I think you need to quiz the agent though as they don't seem to be putting your best interests at heart and if you sell with them you do pay a lot for that. If they are just doing this because they are short staffed it's not good enough but if it's because they don't feel you are in a good enough position to be worth the vendors while that's different. Anyway, there is always competition so maybe don't try to buy and sell through the same agent.

My friends were told this too, it's quite common these days for agents to be demanding, find one who isn't.

See if you can find an agent who is independent and not part of a large chain. The large chains are run from head office and seem to employ the bully boy tactics and one size fits all.

It’s not your agents fault. It is the dire housing system we find ourselves in. There is a huge shortage of short term lets available which in the past have been traditionally used when the chain can’t complete intact. Several of my friends have experienced this situation. Massive amounts of downsizing financial gains have been ploughed into rentals and storage costs rendering the financial benefits of downsizing questionable. My SIL is now technically homeless because the chain broke down and couldn’t afford to stay in the home she shared with her partner prior to them separating. There is no social housing available either. People who never imagined they would be homeless are now finding themselves in this awful situation. Much harder to cope with the older we are. I eu sad h you all the best for the future.

I want to downsize. I have looked at 5 houses so far though my own house isn't ready to put on the market.
I go on Rightmove. I email for a viewing, explain my position and I get shown round my the agent.
Nobody minds. I even take a friend or two with ne to help ask the right questions and to have someone to discuss it with.
Surely if a house has plenty of viewings, it looks more likely to sell.
4/5 houses I have viewed have since sold.

We downsized just over 5 years ago. The market was very slow at the time - we couldn’t put in an offer on another house until we had an offer on ours although we could view other houses once ours was on the market.
I asked the estate agent what would happen if our buyer started pushing us and we couldn’t find anywhere suitable. She said find another buyer (this is bearing in mind it was very slow at the time). As it happened our buyer did threaten to pull out towards the end if we didn’t complete on a certain date but I ignored that and their threats came to nothing, There’s no way I would be bullied into going into rental I’d rather the chain collapsed.

We put our house on the market in March & moved 3 months ago. Our understanding was that you couldn’t view anywhere officially unless your own home was on the market. Which is fair enough, it shows you’re serious about moving. But needing a buyer before viewing is ridiculous. I do understand if a seller has exchanged or moved out but there seems to be no justification for this otherwise. I wish you all the best. It’s a big step downsizing but also a great relief once it’s all done.