Friends of ours lost out on an (insanely high) bidding war for a house a few doors down from ours. We live on a pond, so it's pretty unique real estate that isn't the same even one street over. We're already on the "cheap street" for the pond, so there's only a handful of other houses nearby that would be possible. They had been looking for a year in a few towns, and are now devastated they missed this one, but it went out of budget.
We just moved here ourselves 4 months ago, but I plan to ask the neighbors to tell us if they will tell us if they hear of anyone selling. I also wanted to suggest to our friends to write a letter for the other nearby neighbors to ask if they would consider selling. But, I don't want them to send off a creepy/stalkerish etc vibe at all.
What sorts of things would be useful to share? Their family they'd raise there? (Twins, 2.5 yo). That they wouldn't tear the house down and would cherish the 1930s/1940s architecture common around here? (She's a museum curator...). The love of the water? (She wrote her master's thesis on something related to ships and worked at a seagoing museum for a while). Love of the community, schools, etc.? Something else? Or is it really just about the numbers to get people to consider selling and they should make an actual offer for place sight unseen (which is totally scary and not sure I could tell them to do that)?
Other advice?
In particular, I had hopes up for them because there's a house two doors down where we heard one half of a couple died in the late spring/early fall (it sounds so macabre to say it) - but after some online research on deeds, etc., I think a child (one of 8) is now living there and put in the homestead exemption.