Coffin Dodger

As you may have seen from my rant about estate agents last week I'm trying to buy a house for me and the missus at the moment. Still proving to be quite an ordeal and this is just at the price negotiation stage.

Anyway, we've sold our current house to a first time buyer, seen a place we liked so put in an offer.

Not sure what the normal thing to do is these days but seeing the market is fairly slow, we're in a good position, and we could point out a few things that could do with sorting / improving with the place we whacked in an offer 10% below the asking. As a starting point though we'd have been over the moon if they'd accepted....

We also found out they'd only been there 1.5 years so looked up what they paid for it.... 249k, it's now on for 300k. Pretty tidy profit for a year and a half!

First offer got turned down, so we went up another 5k to 275k, this would be fine except for the fact they were taking at least a whole day, sometimes longer to come back with a response The whole process repeated so we we're offering 280k.

Finally got it out of the estate agent that they pretty much want the asking price and won't settle for much less Why the hell didn't they market it 10 - 20k over what they wanted in the first place

Still think it's a bit cheeky to expect 300k from a place they bought 1.5 years ago for 249k, they say they got it for that price as the owner had to sell quickly due to emigrating / having two mortgages. Lucky barstewards, wish we'd been looking then!

Should I walk away or pay what they want? Problem is we both really like it, realistically it is worth what they're selling it for, and we need to get things sorted quickly or our buyer will want to move in and we'll have to rent

TopBanana

If it's worth it then buy it, none of your business how much they paid for it

stilover

If you pay full whack, your encouraging the house price boom.

If it doesn't sell at £300k, they'll bring the price down. Yes you might lose the house, but yet again you could get it for less than £300K by hanging on.

There are plenty more houses for sale.

Volks

I`d walk to be honest, but if you both like it and can afford it etc etc.

Have the vendors found something to buy? Maybe they`re in no real hurry to move fast so can afford to wait for the full price.

I`d at least wait a couple of days before putting another offer in (if that`s what you decide to do). I`d be very reluctant to pay the asking price to be honest.

davegtt

If its realistically worth what theyre selling for (which you say it is) then why is it cheeky to expect it?

If you can afford it and the place is worth it then pay what you think its worth. Nobody here can tell you otherwise. Good luck

davegtt

milo

Because they would have got less people looking at it.

There is more than one strategy for selling a house. By pricing at what your lowest acceptable offer would be, you tend to get a lot more people looking around the property and hope to spark off a bidding war and having your property go for at least the asking price, if not more.

Not sure what area you're from, but around here, houses put on cheaply (compared to what they're really worth) often end up selling for a fair bit more than the asking price due to bidding wars. Houses put on at a higher price (than what they're worth) tend not to get so many people through the door, don't get as many offers, and may well have to reduce their price (or linger on the market for a while, which can be off-putting to many people, so still no offers).

If you've seen the property at 300k that you like and can't find anything else you want at (or around) that price bracket, what's the problem really? Are you saying you'd pay 300k if an identical house in an identical area was on the market for £320/330k? Is it just that you want to feel like you've grabbed yourself a bargain by getting it for 6/8/10% below the asking price or whatever?

It is, of course, worth finding out a LOT more about the vendors situation. One other possible reason why they aren't keen to accept offers could be because they've only just gone on the market, haven't found anywhere else to live, and so are in no hurry to offload their house. This could also give some hints into whether you're likely to come across problems if you go ahead and do the deal with them.

Paul3446

Don't forget the £10,000 stamp duty you'll pay at £300k!

Unless it's the house of your dreams I'd hold out.

stilover

Why is that funny?

Surely the house price boom has been encouraged by people buying at the asking price or more. If your selling a house for £300K and no one buys it, what are you going to do? Lower the price.

Coffin Dodger

It's a good point I suppose and seems to be working for them. If it was on for 320k we wouldn't have given it a second look. Guess in some respects getting in now is not such a bad thing before too many other people get interested in it. Then it could spark of a bidding war and that would be the end of it for us.

Think they are looking for somewhere to move too and do have some places lined up if and when they sell, but yes you're right it would be a good idea to ascertain if they can also get moving quickly if we buy it.

Coffin Dodger

£9000 actually but the thought of that still makes me

David Lock

If it's what you both want stop fannying around. Put an offer in for £295 and say you hope to Exchange in around 6 weeks or sooner.