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Having sold our house we are just about to go into a rented property (rather than loose the sale).
We have looked at quite afew houses and only had "that feeling" in two of them.
Now everyone goes on about the current market ya-di ya-di ya, it's a buyers market etc, now the two houses have been just over our budget so we ended up offering 10 K less on one house and 15 K on the other both houses are around the 200k mark.
So we have had a flat no from both sellers re the offers we put forward.
Are we being unrealistic, will we ever find a home.........?
It is a buyers market if they need to sell. You are now better placed as a you have no chain.
However if people bought at the peak and/or stacked more debt onto the mortgage then they probably can't sell or just have their heads in the sand.
There are a couple of sites that have recent/previous sold prices so check out what they paid before making an offer or looking at them.
I recently bought a property for 6% less than asking but the guy was keen to sell and I had not chain.
Other places that I'd offered similar discounts to said flat no and in my opinion they were being un-realistic as the values of their properties were above the average selling values for the area and higher than the zoopla estimates.
Tell the agent you won't go higher but the offer still stands. Took my vendors 6 weeks to accept my cheeky offer. 😀
You need to Haggle.
In my experience the one you offered 15k below, if you really wanted the house then you should have given them your next best offer of say £12k below the asking, but stating the many 'faults' you have found (made up) and will have to rectify.
If they tell you to bugger off again they don't really want to sell and are unrealistic and are waiting for an offer above asking price.
If they come back with a counter offer, then it's game on !
Or if the house hasn't sold in 4 or 6 weeks go back again with a lower offer and see if they are keen to to sell / negotiate then.
15k and 10k under asking price offers for £200k houses are decent, serious offers. I am surprised that they were flatly rejected. As siad previously leave them on the table and check with the agent after a couple of weeks whether they have changed their minds re. negotiation.
It's not your average market at the moment, a lot of different factors affecting the situation which can also vary dramatically depending on location.
It's not what you think it's worth that matters, it's what the sellers are prepared to accept that is the deciding factor. You have to be patient and when the right property comes along pull out all the stops.
I think they refer to this new trend of under-offering as the "reality gap", and it seems, according to an estate agent we spoke to a few months back, that most properties are selling for anything up to 20% less than the asking price.
We were in the market for a property we could realistically afford, but I doubt we could have sold our house at its current value in the current market, which would have left us with quite shortfall in our necessary deposit.
If you have no burden of property to sell then I'd say your offers were quite generous, and, in the current market, realistic, but it depends on the sellers need for a quick sale. 🙂
will we ever find a home.........?
No --give up now.
there was an auction up in the northeast tonight ,starting price for a house £750 , how long is string......
To be honest the second house has only been on the market a couple of weeks so he may change his mind if he gets no further interest.
But the first property had their house up for £200k on a road where other similar houses didn't sell even though they were on for 190 and 195. Needless to say they too have now taken it off the market.
What if I were to go back for a second viewing and had a chat with the guy?(I don't trust the estate agents tbh, as they were really keen on me making an appointment with their finacial advisor)
christmas has come very early on the market this year. almost nothing been added in the last 2-3 weeks round here.
are the houses your offering on priced realistically? some stuff we've seen is on for stupid/ optimistic prices. other places are much more realistic and therefore much less wiggle room.
[i]but I doubt we could have sold our house at its current value in the current market, [/i]
Then its not its 'current' value...
current market value is what somebody will pay you - NOTHING ELSE
Your house may not be worth what you want or need to sell it for.
The sooner people get that concept into their heads the better
Had offer of about 6% under accepted on 1st property we wanted to buy. Broke down when survey revealed major issues with the roof and they wouldn't haggle any further reduction. It's still on the market 3 months later.
Took an offer of 5% below for our property and were happy with that.
2nd property we wanted to buy had an offer accepted at 5% below but again issues mean trying to get that down to 7% below. Awaiting vendors reply.
It works both ways. If they want to sell they will compromise. I do think it is dependent on area. there are some areas where I would consider at least 10-15% as wholly reasonable but other areas of high demand/poor supply then asking price or above may be appropriate.
You've done the right thing and are ready to pounce. I don't think you'll ever get a bargain with a house that's been on sale for ages. Basically the sellers are being over optimistic and will never move much. The good deals are on houses that have recently come on and being ready means you can snap one up. Keep looking.
When our current house went on the market we offered full asking that day, the seller needed to sell to keep his chain alive after the buyer fell through. We knew it was a great price as we'd seen a lot of similar properties. We were in rented accommodation with a good deposit from a flat sale.
We sold at 7% under and bought at about the same.
The only advice I have is buy somewhere you want to live for a long time and the rest doesn't matter so much.
I once walked away from a sale over the fixtures & fittings, most notably the curtains, I have since concluded that the vendor was looking for an excuse not to sell, & as it turned out I ended up with a beter place.
What will be will be, & some (a lot of people) are congealed in to selling a home they are happy with because the estate agent talked tem in to it.
if it helps (assuming all goes through) we've just sold ours at around 10% below asking & have bought at around 5% below asking..
Had we not agreed our purchase we also planned to go to rented.
The value of the house depends on what a buyer is willing to pay and will be accepted if that value is enough for the seller to move forward and buy their next place.
However, if the seller hasn't got a next place yet then they're unlikely to accept a low-ish offer (like us this summer after missing out on the place we wanted to buy and hadn't found somewhere else).
Exceptions to this are when people just want to get rid of a place - work relocation, divorce - you can end up getting lucky. We looked round a place that the vendor had knocked off 25% from their original asking price because they needed to relocate and move in to their new place by the end of the summer. Unfortunately the place was just a bit too unconventional in layout and ridiculously big for just 3 of us, we (well the OH) would've spent most our lives cleaning and spent far too much trying to keep the place warm.
We've had no interest on our house, but I think its overpriced. However I'm expecting to be knocked down so the price reflects an overhead that should cover our moving costs and any knock down in price. People have enquired through Rightmove but no viewings, not even a cheeky offer of 20% under the asking price. No other houses in our area are moving either really.
As someone mentioned above, you probably need to haggle, i.e. go in slightly lower than you would expect to get accepted (if it does, bonus), let it sit for a week or so and then go back with a slightly higher offer. That way the sellers might feel like they've got something back and be more likely to accept. As with a lot of sales, it's mainly mind games.
We had the help of a relative who is a surveyor and does buying houses for a living. We made a cheeky offer, which was flatly rejected, saying that they wanted the full asking price. Left on our own, we'd probably have thought, sod that, seller clearly doesn't want to sell that much.
He was perfectly happy to call up a day or two later and say that the offer was still on the table, point out again that it was to complete quickly, no chain etc. and they took an offer very very slightly above our original offer (but nothing like the original asking price). There's no such thing as cheekiness when you're buying things where haggling is involved - it is just business.
Now you're not in a chain, if you're still interested, I'd be calling back the two that you were interested in, saying that you have no chain, could buy their houses within some short amount of time (a month or two), and giving the same or perhaps a lower offer.
It is hard for people selling who bought recently, because they are getting offers for less than they bought the house for, which is psychologically hard for some people to deal with.
15k and 10k under asking price offers for £200k houses are decent, serious offers. I am surprised that they were flatly rejected. As siad previously leave them on the table and check with the agent after a couple of weeks whether they have changed their minds re. negotiation.
This. If you've just put the house on the market, or just dropped the asking price, they won't want to immediately want to accept an offer - someone might come in closer to the asking price. If they've been on for months and not getting any interest then yes, they are.
Even 15k is less than 10% under so that is far from cheeky. Make sure they are aware that the offers still open and wait. If there are other, better offers made I doubt their estate agent will fail to get back to you to find out if you'll make a counter-offer.
If someone offered me 10k under my 115k asking price I'd be tempted.
Depends where you are and what the market is like in that area.
Where I'm looking to buy, houses are selling at or very near asking price within a couple of weeks.
This is Chorlton (Manchester) in the upto £250k price range.
As per the people above, it all really depends on the seller. We're in the middle of a purchase / sell right now. Originally I took asking price for my house in 36hrs, and knocked down my onward buy by 15%. Simple facts, mine was really well done up and their's was a bomb site. Mine was in a really desirable location (near to the centre of Bath where prices have continued to rise) their's not so (the countryside)
Then my sale fell though. People at the bottom of the chain pulled out. I put mine back on the market with a simple instruction. Only people ready to move (sounds like you!) to view and not a single offer will be taken. It's asking price or nothing. We got 4 offers, the answer to each was no. All of them have since been back in touch to offer a bit more (which is what you should be doing). We're lucky, it re-sold for asking price in 5 days. Most people won't get this so if I were you, I'd keep with the offers.
Thanks for the advice folks, I will leave it a week then get in touch with the agents. Just a quick question is it wrong ie legally to speak to the seller in person?
From your point of view no, you've not signed any contract to say you won't.
from the sellers point of view then possibly, depending on the contract that they've signed with the agency, but normally the contract will say that however the house is sold (ie through them or not), you have to pay fees. This means most people get agents to do the work. That and the fact they are British so run away from any kind of money discussion!