The queue explained: your place, your privacy, and two years
What the queue on a home's page is, how places are kept, and what it never shows. open for offer is the pre-market: interest gathers before any advert.
open for offer is the pre-market: you can register interest in any home with a page here, advertised or not. Places last two years; 46 of 258 recent Stamford resales were held 20+ years.
Register interest in a home and you join its queue in the order you arrived. Your place is kept for two years from your last activity.
Owners take their time: 46 of the 258 Stamford homes resold in the year to August 2026 had been held 20 years or more.
The queue never shows names, registering is not an offer, and you stay in the queue if the owner tests the market.
Last reviewed 3 November 2026. These rules are as the live home pages state them on that date.
What is the queue?
The queue is our one name for all the interest in a home. Before a home is listed, that means people who have registered interest.
If the owner tests the market, the home becomes open for offer, and offers join the same queue.
open for offer is the pre-market, the market that exists before a property is ever advertised. The queue is how interest in a home can gather there before anyone has decided to sell.
How is your place kept?
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What decides my place? | The order in which interest arrived |
| How long is it kept? | Two years from your last activity |
| Is my name shown? | No. The queue never shows names |
| Does it cost anything? | No charge to register interest |
| Is it an offer? | No. Private and non-binding |
| Does open for offer contact the owner? | No. We don't contact the owner for you |
Order records when interest arrived; it is not a promise about who an owner sells to. GOV.UK's guide to buying a home says an offer is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged.
Why two years?
Owners rarely decide quickly. In Stamford, the homes that sold in the 12 months to August 2026 had typically been owned for 9.4 years, on HM Land Registry's record.
Interest registered today may meet an owner's decision a long way off.
Keeping your place for two years from your last activity means a single visit is not wasted. If you come back and stay active, the two years run from then.
What does the queue never show?
- Your name. The queue never shows names.
- Anything that commits you. Registering is not an offer.
- A promise that the home will be sold.
The home's page may show how many have registered interest, never who.
What happens if the owner tests the market?
Testing the market is the owner's step, and the owner decides whether to take it. If they do, the home becomes open for offer, and the queue you joined is the same queue. You do not need to register again.
If they never do, your place simply lapses two years after your last activity. Nothing is charged and nothing is owed.
A worked example
Say you register interest in a cottage in November 2026 and do nothing else. Your place is kept until November 2028. If you come back to the home in 2027 and act again, the two years start again from then.
If the owner tests the market in 2028, the cottage becomes open for offer and your earlier interest is already in its queue. You can then decide whether to make an offer. Nothing you did in 2026 obliges you to.
Why no names?
Registering interest should be easy to do and easy to walk away from. Showing names would make it neither. The queue records that interest exists and when it arrived, which is what an owner needs to know first.
Is the queue only for unadvertised homes?
No. It holds interest in a home whatever stage it is at. It matters most before an advert, because that is when there is no other way to show an owner that a buyer is there.
How to join a queue
Find the home through property search, open its page and choose Register interest. Our guide to how register interest works takes you through it, and finding a home before it is advertised covers the other routes.
Sources
Queue rules: the live home page on open for offer, read 3 November 2026.
Holding period: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, Stamford town, sales dated 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026 with an earlier sale on record (258 homes), read 3 November 2026.
See our guide to selling in Stamford for the method. Offers: GOV.UK, Buying a home, checked 3 November 2026.
Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Corrections: none so far. If we find an error, we will correct it here, with the date and the figure we changed.
Common questions
What is the queue on open for offer?
The queue holds all interest in a home: registered interest before it is listed, and offers once it is open for offer. Places are kept in the order interest arrived, and no names are shown.
How long does my place in the queue last?
Two years from your last activity, so you stay in the queue if the owner tests the market.
Does being first in the order mean I get the home?
No. Order records when interest arrived; it is not a promise about who an owner sells to. Nothing is binding until contracts are exchanged.