Going back to view a house I think I want. If the price is right.

What sort of percentage drop should I start off at?

I don’t want to be rude, see. I’m a nice guy.

If you’re not embarrassed when making the offer, it’s too high.

Depends. I know some people who’ve been shut out of the process for making a silly low offer because the sellers decided that they were either taking the proverbial and likely to be a pain to deal with or just not serious about it in the first place. Meant that they missed out on a house they really liked.

Of course, most people don’t think like that but it is a risk. Less so maybe if there aren’t many people seriously interested

Cheeky is just a few quid above no

Do your research on the area, the street, recent sales, how much you’ll need to spend, take off 10% and round it down to the nearest 10k.

Be rude

Two, maybe three times I’ve sent written offers at 50% of the asking price. Never had so much as a reply from any of them !!

We were told by the estate agent to put an offer in at 40% below the askign price on the first house we bought.

They settled for 35% less than the askign price.

“It depends” Would be my answer.

If you can justify the price you want, go for it.

I would say it depends whether you are in a good position and they would prefer to sell to you rather than anyone else. Have you a property to sell? Finance if applicable in place? How long has it been on the market? How serious are they about selling?

Make a low offer and see what happens.

Edit: if you’re using an estate agent, have they advised you as to how much the vendors will drop?

You don’t know their situation. Go very low. Always feel a bit more sorry for yourself than them.

How long has it been on the market? And to be brutal, how desperate are the sellers?

How long has it been on the market?

3 or 4 months

how desperate are the sellers?

Not very (they say…)

They settled for 35% less than the askign price.

Wowzer.

Depends how it’s put, rather than how much.

I had an offer on my house from a guy who started at “because you’re desperate…”. I wasn’t that desperate, I wouldn’t deal with him.

I accepted an offer from a couple who came at it with “we really like it, but money is tight”. The actual figures were not that far apart, but it was who would I prefer to deal with?

That all depends if the price being asked is cheeky too! Recently purchased ours after putting in an offer 12% below asking price. They were taking the piss slightly so i thought i would too…held our nerve, got the property.

If you dont ask you dont get……….

Estate agents commission doesnae vary much either way – be very cheeky! He wants a quick sale.

After making your offer you are thrown out or worse still thumped then its reasonable to assume your offer was not only too low but insulting but joking aside, there is only central London where prices are rising, everywhere else is static or falling and as the other posters said, do your research, its the biggest transaction most people will ever do and the more research you do the better the deal you should get.

the house i’m sat in i went in 45k under the asking price. they said no and i walked away, i eventually ended up getting it 40k under.

all depends on what you can offer – cash with no chain and you are golden, even more so now in a stagnant buyers market (at least it is in cornwall).

It largely depends on the calibre of the agent and how they put the offer forward. I offered 20% less on a house recently, the vendor was insulted but the agent persuaded them to make an offer on the property they wanted and see if it could be made to work. That property ended up falling through, so subsequently mine did.

At the moment, nothing is shifting and everyone thinks their own property is worth more than it is. If they can haggle a similar drop along the chain, then things will keep moving.

Arm yourself with LOTS of comparables, nethouseprices and zoopla are good, but as was mentioned earlier, always start with a positive: “We love what you’ve done with the decor, we’d be happy to move straight in as it is… But, similar properties have sold for a lot less” etc etc…

(My brother is a regional manager for a large estate agency, so his coaching was very useful throughout the house buying process!)

the house i’m sat in i went in 45k under the asking price. they said no and i walked away, i eventually ended up getting it 40k under.

If the asking price was £100k, you are a haggling God.

If the asking price was £995k, you are a total push over.

% is more relevant

Have you got the Property Bee toolbar for Firefox? If the house is listed on rightmove, you can see any changes to the listing, including price drops. This can help give an insight into how likely they are to accept an offer -for example if they have reduced the price recently, they may be in the ‘need to drop the price to get a sale’ mindset.

depends on the place and how long its on for …

i bid on one last week at small % over asking and wasnt even close ….. was on the market for only 3 weeks and 5 of us were bidding for it ….it was also a wreaker needing about 40/50k work on it !

anything thats been on the market round here for 3 months that ive viewed has had major flaws that meant thats why its left on the market not just because its over priced (and i dont just mean bad decor or shit i mean flood plains and the like)

if they have reduced the price recently, they may be in the ‘need to drop the price to get a sale’ mindset.

Or more likely they are less likely to accept a low offer after dropping already.

We bought an amazing town house in Orkney with a bid 1/3 lower than their asking price. It had been on the market for a year, no one realized its potential.

You can never be too cheeky.

I did a thread a while ago asking people what they paid and what the asking price was, it was very interesting and varied considerably by region.

Should be putting the learnings into use soon myself 🙂

I’ll be selling my house too obviously – and it will be priced to sell (stamp duty threshold kind of dictates this), so if anyone is too cheeky they will get short shrift.

find out what it last sold for there are lots of sites that show it. Will give you an idea what they can stand to loose (unless multi remortgages) when I last looked we were interested in the ones that had been owned and appreciated a lot as they might take the cheekier offer. Those that bought at the peak we reckoned were less likely to budge(or couldn’t). Ours never sold so didn’t have to get into it though.

Our initial offer was based on max price we would pay for house – 105k – minus a bit for haggling room – 7.5k

So first offer was 97.5k, asking price was 115k. A lot depends on how realistic the asking price is in the first place. In our case I felt the asking price was unrealistic. If I’d thought the house was worth the asking price I would have gone in higher than we did.

We settled on 101k so our 15%+ under asking first offer obviously didn’t insult anybody so much that they refused to deal with us any further

We bid about 10% lower than asking price on a house that had JUST hit the market but we were getting a bit desperate to move, sick of hunting and the house was nice and fairly well sorted, plus reasonably well priced for the area. We tried a few times but eventually got them to leave a few things like big expensive freezers and paid the full price. But it’s a nice house, in a nice location and we’re happy in it.

We got a further 18% off a New build after they had already dropped the sale price considerably…..Tried a few time to kick them harder, but they were not going any lower

Paid 24% less than it was originally up for 😉

We had no chain, huge deposit and Mortgage in place, and we wanted to complete quickly, It’d been empty after the original buyers had fallen foul of the crash.

Right place, right time

You know what to do Chaz….. 8)

Be cheeky-cheeky 😀

Yes take a hoody and proper mugg them 😉

This is making for very interesting reading. We might be looking at putting an offer in on somewhere soon.

So here’s a little one for you which I would be interested on people take.

House we are looking at is currently on at £179,000
Went on the market at £195,000 in May 2011
Dropped to £179,000 in July 2011

Now it hasn’t so are the thoughts that people feel it is worth no where near the asking price or that they don’t want to sell anywhere under asking. I know they bought it for £52,000 in 2000 but it has had 2 extensions done and been fully renovated and decorated.

Thoughts?

Offer them £52,000 🙂

Friends sold their house near leatherhead…got the asking price within 5 hours of it being on sale..

My brother up north has given up selling his house….just aint shifting, even at a lower than market value price!

think of what you would be happy to pay then knock at least 10k off you can always up your offer, but if you go in too high and its accepted straight away you will always wonder what if… you may be a nice guy but would you give a total stranger 10k? treat it as a business deal thats all it really is

Be cheeky. If they take your first offer, you’ll always wonder how much less you could have paid.

My strategy is always to try and avoid putting your offer as based on either what you or they think it is worth. I’m always very clear to say that my offer is X based on similar properties (with examples) but beyind that price I can’t be unconditional and would need to involve something else like sellign another property.

What that does is says that you are not closed to it being worth more but how much is a cash offer with no strings worth against an offer conditional on other stuff. Even if you don;t have another property who is to know that ? Has worked for me twice now, last time they moved just under 300K on a 1.6m house….i knew they were motivated but the risk of sitting on a 6 month wait for me to sell something in a flat market vs 1.3 in cash signed in 24 hours is a very compelling situation. Simple fact is I have never come across a seller that is realistic about what their house is worth and also never found a buyer that thinks the same number !

Here you go OP…

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/so-if-youve-bought-a-house-in-the-last-year-or-so

Just had a offer accepted on a house at about 9% less than asking. However, it had just been reduced and the offer was 15% less than the original.
This was in the SE, 50 minutes from London. Although we were cash buyers and the house was empty, so it should be quick and easy for everyone.

Remember a house is only worth want someone is willing to pay for it.

crispo – Member
House we are looking at is currently on at £179,000
Went on the market at £195,000 in May 2011
Dropped to £179,000 in July 2011

They dropped the price quick! Do you know why? If they’ve made an offer on another property they might be desperate for a quick sale and this would give them a minimum acceptable figure. Talk to the agent.

The house we bought 18 months ago was on for £270, then reduced to £250k. We offered £230k and settled for £240k with extras.