Moving house - when should I put my house up for sale?

[starlorna22]

My partner and I want to move house, as we feel the area we live is going downhill and not the place we want to raise childern. We've also had a few payrises since we bought it and so can now afford something a little bigger.
I'm unsure when we should put our house up for sale, we haven't seen one we want to move to yet, but don't know how long ours will take to sell.
Should we put ours up for sale first and try to cope until we find something, or wait until we find something we want, put an offer in and then hope ours sells quickly? It all seems a bit confusing!!

[andy-hughes]

We are trying to sell at the moment, and we have lost the house we wanted to move to - someone was able to put a firm offer in, ours is still on the market.

the market is pretty flat at the moment, especially if you are selling a 2 / 3 bedroom property, so my advice is to get it on the market, so you have a fighting chance of getting a property you want when you find one.

I know this is the delicate balencing act - what happens if youo get a buyer and you haven't found anywhere, but if that happens to us, we will sell and rent, and then be ready to go when a property we want comes available.

Hope this helps.

[tiggs123]

we had a similar situation, my advice would be to speak to the local estae agencies and see what the markets like? see if they have buyers lined up for your sort of property, thats what we did and went with the agent who had the most prospective buyers on their books. turns out we sold within 24 hrs with the condition there is no pressure to find somewhere as we had a cash buyer/investor buy our property so they could wait for us.
good luck