Off-market means a property is for sale but not advertised. For a buyer that is genuinely valuable: no portal audience bidding against you, and time to do the work properly. It is also where buyers get taken advantage of most often, because there is no public listing to check the price against. Here is how to use it well.
No portal launch, no block of viewings on a Saturday, no sealed bids against forty other people. Often you are the only buyer in the conversation.
Survey, solicitor and finance in a sensible order, rather than to a deadline set by an open day. Better decisions get made this way.
No buyer registration fee, no ‘access’ fee, no retainer. Our fee comes from the seller. Be careful with anyone who charges you for a list.
Off-market changes who sees the property, not what you are told about it. Tenure, lease, service charge, EPC and known issues, same as any listing.
Area, budget, what it has to do and what you will not compromise on. The tighter the brief, the better the matches — vague briefs get vague results.
Instructions held back, pre-launch allocations, and sellers we know are considering it. You hear about it before the portals do.
Comparable evidence so you know the price is right, then the offer, the survey and the chase through to completion.
Almost always for a practical reason rather than a mysterious one. A probate sale the family wants handled quietly. A divorce. A seller who does not want tenants, neighbours or staff to know. A landlord disposing of part of a portfolio without signalling the rest. A vendor testing price before committing to a public launch. Occasionally a property that failed to sell openly and is being rested.
That last one matters to you, and it is the single most useful question you can ask: has this been on the market before, and at what price? A good agent will tell you. If the answer is evasive, treat the price with suspicion.
The honest disadvantage is price transparency. With no public listing there is no advertised asking price to compare, no price-reduction history, and no portal record to check later. You are relying on the agent’s comparables — and the agent acts for the seller.
So ask for the evidence rather than the opinion. Sold prices on the same street for the last twelve months, not the postcode district. Pounds per square foot. What the property would be advertised at if it went public tomorrow. Any competent agent can produce all three; unwillingness to is itself an answer.
Whether they have a personal interest in the property — ownership, a family connection, a stake in the seller. Section 21 of the Estate Agents Act 1979 requires that to be disclosed, and off-market sales are where it most often is not. And whether any fee is being asked of you as the buyer, because a buyer-side ‘access fee’ changes who the agent is really working for.
We give you the comparable evidence unprompted, including the sold prices that do not flatter the asking price. We tell you when a property was previously marketed and at what. And when we think an off-market price is simply optimistic, we say so — even though we are instructed by the seller, because the alternative is a survey and a renegotiation three weeks later that wastes everyone’s time.
Sometimes, and not reliably. Where a seller is trading price for speed or discretion, there can be a genuine discount. Where the property is simply being kept quiet to avoid a public price reduction, you may be looking at an optimistic figure with no listing history to show you that. Ask for sold comparables on the street and judge the price on those rather than on the fact that it is off-market.
Not of the format, which is entirely normal and usually has a mundane explanation. Be alert to two things: an agent using ‘off-market’ as a scarcity tactic to rush you, and an agent withholding basic facts on the grounds that the sale is private. The second one is not just poor practice, it is unlawful.
Not with us. Some firms charge buyers a registration or search fee for an off-market list; a few are worth it, most are not, and it creates an obvious conflict about whose interests are being served. Our fee is paid by the seller, so nothing is charged to you at any stage.
Send us a specific brief — area, budget, size, and what would make you actually move. Specific briefs get matched; ‘anything in London under a million’ does not. Once you are registered you hear about instructions when they arrive with us rather than when they reach the portals.
Yes. Nothing about the process differs once you have agreed terms — the same lender valuation, the same survey, the same conveyancing. The only practical difference is that you have more time to arrange all of it, which is one of the main reasons to buy this way.
