The current property market is not straightforward. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either not paying attention or has a reason to say so. Sellers are cautious, yet buyers are intense. The noise around pricing, conditions, and timing is considerable, and for a growing number of homeowners who are privately weighing up their options, the prospect of committing to a full public launch, boards, portals, viewings, closing dates, feels like a significant step when they are not yet certain they want to take it.
That hesitation is entirely understandable. It is also, in many cases, what is driving one of the more interesting shifts we are seeing in the market right now.
Off-market sales are not new. They have existed at the very top end of the market for as long as estate agency has, driven by the desire for privacy, discretion, and the particular preference of certain sellers for a quieter route to a conclusion. What is new is who is having the conversation.
This year, Corum has completed off-market sales across a broad and perhaps surprising range of homes. Downsizer bungalows. West End townhouses. Multi-million pound villas in Glasgow’s prime suburbs. The common thread is not price point. It is a seller with a specific and entirely reasonable question: what would my home actually achieve in this market, and can I find out without fully committing to the process?
Those are two of the most sensible questions a seller can ask. The off-market approach, done properly, answers both.
“What we are finding is that the off-market conversation has become much more mainstream,”says John Davidson, Partner at Corum. “It used to be almost exclusively about privacy, sellers who had personal or professional reasons for not wanting their home publicly listed. That still exists, but increasingly the driver is commercial curiosity.”
“Sellers want to understand what their home is worth right now, in this market, without the pressure of a full launch. The off-market route gives them that intelligence. In a significant number of cases this year, it has also given them a result that exceeded what they expected.”
“What we are finding is that the off-market conversation has become much more mainstream”
“What we are finding is that the off-market conversation has become much more mainstream”
The appeal is straightforward. A seller who is not yet certain they want to move can test the market without exposing themselves to it. If a buyer emerges at the right price, a decision that felt uncertain suddenly becomes considerably clearer. If the right buyer does not materialise, nothing has been lost, no days on market, no price reduction conversation, no public record of a property that did not sell. The optionality alone has genuine value.
What is less straightforward is the delivery.
Off-market is not a passive exercise and it is not something every agent can credibly offer. It is a genuine test of a database, a buyer network, and the commercial intelligence to build a deal from both ends simultaneously. Finding a motivated, financially capable buyer who has not yet found what they are looking for. Understanding what they need and how a particular home might meet it. Managing the expectations of a seller who has not yet fully committed to moving. Bringing those two positions together in a way that holds through to conclusion. It requires guile as much as process, and it requires a depth of market knowledge that takes years to develop.
“The off-market deals that work are the ones where you genuinely know your buyer pool,” says Mark Jamieson, Partner at Corum’s Newton Mearns office, who has an exceptional track record in off-market sales across the affluent suburbs of Glasgow’s Southside and East Renfrewshire. “In markets like Newton Mearns, Giffnock and Thorntonhall, there are buyers who have been searching for some time, who know exactly what they want, and who have missed out enough times to be genuinely motivated when something appropriate comes their way.”
“When you can bring a home to that buyer before it reaches the open market, the dynamic is a good one for both sides. But it only works if the agent actually knows who that buyer is. You cannot manufacture that relationship. It is built deal by deal over years.”
“When you can bring a home to that buyer before it reaches the open market, the dynamic is a good one for both sides”
“When you can bring a home to that buyer before it reaches the open market, the dynamic is a good one for both sides”
That depth of relationship is precisely what separates an off-market process that delivers from one that amounts to a quiet enquiry that goes nowhere. The leg work involved is considerable. The reward, when it comes together, is a clean transaction at a strong price for a seller who never had to fully commit to the uncertainty of a public launch.
For homeowners who are privately curious about what their home might achieve, but are not yet ready to put a board up and see what happens, it is a conversation worth having. There is no obligation in it, and no exposure. What there is, increasingly, is a genuine and often surprising answer to the question that most sellers are really asking.
What is my home actually worth right now?
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