Moving House - What comes first?

I was just interested how other people do this. Whenever I have moved home I've always put my house on the market first so that I have an idea of my budget and so that I'm a step ahead when it comes to looking and finding my ideal new home.

I always thought you couldn't make an offer or even go ahead with a purchase at full price unless you had yours sold let alone not even on the market

I don't know much but I'm pretty sure you can make offers - someone I know through work, their daughter has had a nightmare because their buyer was having problems with the sale of their house, so it happens, just tends to complicate things I guess.

I've always put a house up first on the market.

You can view and get on estate agents books for your next one, just need to tell them that yours is on the market but not sold yet
Nothing stopping you from doing the next step, its really upto the vendor of the next property if they are willing to wait till yours is sold.
My son did this and the vendor of the property he wanted waited for his to be sold, but then his was snapped up in 2 weeks of going up......times as regards house sales today may make yours take longer, but they are selling so I wouldn't worry to much

House on the market first....

In fact, when we were last moving, a lot of sellers wouldn't accept an offer unless your house was under offer or sold.....

Thanks all

This is how I understood it to be, I know that Clive and I wouldn't entertain an offer or consider this sold at full price if the buyer hadn't sold theirs already.

I wondered if times had changed greatly or if I was missing something

Don't get me wrong, we went to view loads, but we were always very clear that we hadn't yet sold ours etc....

We have always put house on the market first and and had some serious interest we always felt we didn't want to find somewhere then have problems. We had ususally had an offer.

We had an offer once on a house for sale and we waited and waited for the surveyor then eventually after much harrassing of the client from the Estate Agent it turned out he couldn't get the mortgage due to being self employed and some problems. So we had to start all over again. That is rare though I beleive.

Most people have mortgages in place if they have another house to sell or fist time buyers will have the deposit anyway I would hope if looking seriously.

Yes, I think you have to view different areas to get a feel for where you want to be, but if we went this weekend and looked, I don't think either of us would be comfortable making an offer or even offering full price and asking them to take it off the market when ours doesn't have it's open day until 7th May.

I suppose we could always tell them we are really interested and would revert if ours sold.

Thanks Lynn, apparently with this open house scheme that we're doing, no-one can view until that day and they are pre-booked in and have already had to provide evidence that they can proceed if they are interested. So much easier than waiting in for people to turn up and them letting you down, or thinking you have sold and having the same thing happen as happened to you and Gorden.

I love moving but I can understand why Clive hates it so much

That's a good idea. When we sold our flat to a first time buyer it took ages because he hadn't been pre approved for a mortgage. We couldn't make too many demands though because he was the only viewer we had.

I wouldn't even view houses till mine was on the market, it would be awful to see your dream home and not be in a position to do anything.

Good luck with the moving Sheree. I'm with Clive - I hate moving house!!!