An article in the Financial Times highlights the growing importance of off-market sales with selling and buying agents explaining the merits of such tactics.
Around 30% of the homes we buy for clients aren’t on Rightmove or in estate agents windows. We get to hear about them because we have a shopping list of what we are looking for but more usually because as professional buyers both agents and private individuals know that we are always looking.
Many sellers are concerned about having their private life, their home, personal possessions indexed for eternity by the likes of Google. Not to mention their financial aspirations when it comes to price and, if they get that asking price wrong, their mistakes. Mistakes which future buyers may see and may seek to take advantage of.
Off-market information can be hard to get hold of. It’s based on trust and it takes time for agents and sellers to decide that they can trust you not to go around the corner and tell another agent about the property or worse still to blab about it. Last year somebody actually posted on social media about a property they knew was available hoping to attract a buyer to ask them to try to acquire it.
Such is the popularity of this kind of selling that there are now websites advertising properties that aren’t on the open market. Sounds mad, I know but check out Invisible Homes or Ostrich and you’ll see what I mean.
If you want to know more or would like some help to find off-market homes then please get in touch.
