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What are people's views when it comes to making an offer on a house, when does it become a piss take of an offer?

Let's say a house that doesn't really need work is up for £160k, what would be a reasonable first offer?

How much higher than what they want to people list their houses at ?

Help Eso ha

Thanks in advance

Think it depends on a few things, like how long it's been on the market, how keen they are to sell, what position you are in etc.

I have know people to reject first offers and refuse to accept any more offers from that person!

Take into consideration the above, work out what you want to pay (maybe research what similar sold for) then knock a couple of grand off for negotiating, and that should be ok.

I'm in a similar position myself so if you manage to find out the answer would you let me know please.

The one I'm looking at has been on the market for 16 months and is insanely over priced.

It's on the market with 3 agents all of whom say "offers over £xxx,xxx"

I think it needs 10-15% knocking off the stated price never mind anything over so what are you supposed to do.......

Depends on your situation as well. As a first time buyer, so chain free, you may be a better prospect to a seller than someone in a chain.

In my experience, first offers never get accepted, as people always assume you are starting low. So no point starting at the price you are willing to pay.

Also, eso will no doubt disagree ;whistle;, don't believe estate agents when they tell you they have had an offer from another party at a certain price, it's usually ballsheet to inflate offers.

On the other hand, if you find a place that is right for you, might be worthwhile to you to go an extra k or 2 to get it!!

I'm guessing that in the £160,000 sort of price area houses move pretty quickly unless they're taking the piss so you need to decide how much you want it and then just go for it.

If it's in an area that you want to move to and there aren't many houses like this available very often then you can bet that several others will be looking with interest and keen to make an offer as well.

Have you been for a look at it yet and registered your interest? If you're very keen I'd get that sorted asap. You can play all kinds of games trying to squeeze the price down but at the end of the day a house is worth what you're willing to pay. If you buy it for £160k and you're happy then you've done well. If you're willing to pay £160k, offer £155k and someone else snaps it up at £160k you'll be really pissed off.

Biggest piece of advice I could give is make your decision and whatever happens don't regret the outcome.

I will answer in more detail tomoz or Monday but if u want to buy in Leigh on Sea I would say start at the asking price and lets see where we go from there...

It's got that way where I am recently on some of the lower priced houses. I've spotted a few on rightmove that have sold within a day or two. You know for a fact they've gone for at least the asking price.

Might be worth doing a check on rightmove but include houses that are sold stc. Have a look at the ones close to your price range and see when they were first listed. If they've been going quickly then you know whether you can afford to take your time a bit or if you need to be fast.

Any chance of a link for us to have a look?

This is the house

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-33831813.html

Been to look this morning, Mrs fell in love and so did I if I'm honest, more than I wanted to pay, only went to look on hope there was room to bargain 10k off price or so, maybe a mistake to view higher than budget.

Looks good and looking at the ones sold nearby you don't have much wiggle room.

The Mrs will always fall in love. It's what they do. Your job is to give her a reality check and tell her that there's a limit and if it's above that it just can't happen.

Thing is you're actually in a good position as far as negotiating goes. If you have an absolute max you can afford you don't need to worry about where to start. If it's £165k then there's absolutely there's no harm trying. The worst they can say is no.

They'll try to get you to increase your offer but you just make it clear that it's all you've got. You don't need to worry about mind games and playing the negotiation system when you're telling the truth.

If you both love the house and £174k is over your budget then in my experience you should work out your absolute limit and just go with it. Don't arse about offering a bit less than you can afford. As soon as you make one slightly bigger offer they'll think you might have a bit more up your sleeve.

Best bet is to just be honest. Let them know that you both love it and that you really want it. You don't have to worry about them trying to make you pay more when you couldn't even if you wanted to. Use every weapon at your disposal including the sympathy angle. You're a young couple starting out wanting your perfect home and you have the cash ready to go. People want to sell their house to nice people if they can. Money is obviously important but no matter how hard you try it's difficult to take emotion out of a house sale.

If you're honest and up front then the fact that you're desperate to own this particular house and therefore less likely to be a problematic buyer might just help swing it.

quick bit of googling tells me the current owners paid £159,950 for it in 2004.

121 went for 189k Feb 2008.
125 went for 173k Aug 2007

You don't really have wiggle room as Matt points out, but there is no harm in offerring a few grand under the asking price and seeing if you can negotiate. 

I'd probably go in at around £167,500.

In all fairness it looks like a really nice, house and you could probably move right in and not need to do any major work which is a massive advantage. 

Hi

I have bought and sold a reasonable number of houses over the years 15+, i always make my first offer at 15% less than the asking price, irrelevant if the place is mint or needs work, and have never bought a property at less than 10% off, when i am selling i have never budged off the asking price.

If you want to live in the house for say 5 -7 years and really want it its worth offering the asking price, but when you have an estate agent give you a value on your house they normally say we will put it on at xxxx and hope to achieve xxxx.

So most people expect to drop at least a few percentage points.

Other thing to bear in mind is that if labour gets into power we could see an early downswing in property prices.

Good luck either way

Helpful.

Such chirpers these estate agents when it's going in their favour!!

Sounds like gazumpville-on-sea down there.

Thanks for the advice guys, appreciate it.

Have looked on zoopla etc and yea looks about right and can't imagine them needing to budge, but like you say no harm in trying, might have one or two houses to look at first, then Prob second viewing here/offer

Can probs ignore 2007/2008 prices for a comparison as that was right before the economy crashing.
2 bed prices still haven't fully recovered. My 2 bed house is just about to go on market and still 15k less than it was worth before the crash.

As Matt stated, gotta keep the mrs in a sane frame of mind when it comes to finance and houses :D

Right am back in the day job now!

Firstly there is no harm in viewing properties that are just outside of affordablility as some vendors will accept an offer dependant on their circumstances but obviously you dont know this at the time of viewing.

Vendors who have found, splitting up, need to sell for financial reasons etc etc will always be a tad more negotiable than a vendor who has just put their property on the market and not found or are not in any rush themselves so if you see a house you are interested you can always ask "whether they have found" on the viewing and it gives you an idea and can ask the agent prior to viewing how long it has been on the market.

I think people like Matt have given good advice itt and using RM Sold Prices to do your research gives a good idea for comparison purposes but everything is relative to area as Vegaslover says prices on a 2 bed of his are still £15k below the 2008 crash but yet where I am we are exeeding 2007 prices by as much as 30% and only saw a drop of 5% in 2008 which was much less than many other parts of the country.

As agents we may get loads of bad publicity about inflating offers/gazumping etc but it's buyers who do it and then vendors who decide to take the offer as we legally have to put forward every offer be it £1 or a million, eg we are currently negotiating a sale where we put the house on the market at £875k two weeks ago and had 3 offers (all at the asking price) one from a non dependant buyer who had his offer accepted but 10 days on despite the fact he has had a survey and started legals one of the other parties sold a flat in London and offered £900k which the vendor said ok I will take that and we went back to buyer A who said reluctantly ok I will offer £900k and it was back with him.

Buyer B then rings up and says I will come upto £925k and the vendor changes their mind again so its buyers and vendors who create gazumping (obv down to lack of supply and usual market forces) and to be honest we dont care who gets it (we do in terms of getting a deal through) as our fee for the above transaction only changes from Just under £11k to £11562.50 so not a massive change.

I have helped a few on here with their searches and would imagine that if Dubai posted itt he would say if he hadnt offered as "Strongly" as he did recently he would have lost a house that will earn much more in the future so dont be disappointed if you offer low on a house that is likely to gain interest as in the vendors head if you end up competing against another buyer then quite often the agent will use the fact that you offered a lower figure as a reason to sell to buyer b and also the vendor definitely remembers you offered lower at the outset.

Good luck with the search though Todd 

As per bolded, that's only on 2 beds in my area, 3 bed semi and up are way higher than pre crash.  Would guess it was down to affordability as 2 beds are usually first homes.

We are never gonna agree but experience tells me that agents putting all offers forward and accepting higher offers is mostly incorrect. Have lost count of how many times I get told 'sorry an offer has just been accepted' by agents who refuse to consider a higher offer. Have also had higher offers declined and see that a property is sold for several k less than I offered.

Don't want to clogg up Todd's thread though.

For my current house that we bought in 2013, we probs overpaid by 10-15k, but it was in a good area and we knew the market was appreciating. Three doors down just gone on for 40k more than we paid!
If you really want it Todd, and can fund it, it may be worth paying an extra couple of k

Just a quick one - house prices fell in January, probably the same for Feb and March - we could be hitting a downward trend and prices could drop by 10 percentage points or more, especially if labour get a majority

Period before and after xmas prices always lower, same every year.

Can't say for other areas, but in the South prices are much higher post Xmas, market is moving fast too