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
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