my top tip: never believe an estate agent when they 'suggest' prices of properties to you. they are working for the Vendor, not you.
offer what you think is a fair price and take into account EVERYTHING in your offer - Items that need attention in the house, Legal, surveys, moving etc.
If you get this place it will feel like a STW collective purchase, invites will be necessary! 
Feel free to chip in for the deposit.
*Update*
The EA mortgage advisor rang me to ask 'qualifying' questions'. At least they seem to be taking this offer more seriously. Fingers crossed.
ahh watch out for that. If you talk to their advisor its for 2 things
1 : to get comission from selling you a mortgauge
2 : to figure out how much money you have to spend and push for that much
get an agreement in principle from a lender, for the figure you need the mortgauge for, and take it in.
£150k rejected.
Will the vendor not make a counter-offer ? That is what happened when I bought my house, I put in a cheeky offer, they came back higher we met in the middle - job done !
(I said you should offer £148k !!)
Anyway good luck with the search, must be frustrating.
never believe an estate agent when they 'suggest' prices of properties to you. they are working for the Vendor, not you.
Theoretically but in reality they are working for themselves.
Say they're on 2% commission, on a sale of 150K that's £3,000. If they can push you to increase to eg 152,500, that will get them an extra £50 in commission. Really worth an extra month of go-betweening / risking the sale and having to start again from scratch? Or would you rather have the £3000 today?
They'll do their best to get the best price possible in the shortest timescale, imho.
MRanger156 - Member£150k rejected.
Never mind. Unrealistic sellers - there is a few around. Remind the estate agent of your offer when its still not sold in Feb.
"Anyway good luck with the search, must be frustrating."
And this is why I said pay up and be happy.
Sorry but you have been/are getting lots of one way advice... there's always another side.
"The reality is house prices won't go up for a decade, wages are lagging behind inflation, houses have to get cheaper as we have less disposable income."
This is undoubtably true if the only buyers of UK housing was it's population. But just like any other market its free and it's open which means its becoming increasingly globalised.... Whole blocks of flats, in london, are being snapped up off plan by over seas buyers.
I realise that a Chinease soveign wealth fund is not going to be interested, with respect, in 170k worth of house but it's only a matter of time before their actions start having an effect along the whole of the housing market price range.
We've been selling out our companies to foreign buyers for years, for example how many Premiership football cubs are UK owned? What makes you think that the global market will stop investing in "cheap" Britain and buy everything that it's nailed down.
Pay up and be happy is only really an option if you've got a big cash deposit. Most first time buyers will be relying on a mortgage, the bank aren't going to lend more than the house is 'worth' just because you really really like the house.
Never mind. Unrealistic sellers - there is a few around. Remind the estate agent of your offer when its still not sold in Feb.
Not sure how to quantify this- assuming the op is paying rent, should he factor in this for the next four- six months, cost of surveys etc in the ongoing search for a new house? Or should he add say 3k to the offer to try and buy now if he really likes the house?
There are two sorts of sellers in this market- those who are happyish to accept a low offer and those who aren't. If I wasn't prepared to, or able to, accept I wouldn't necessarily have any reason to change my mind a few months down the line.
To my way of thinking, if the op likes the house enough he'll carry on negotiating, if it's nowt special to him, he should walk.
Houses, rightly or wrongly, can be bought with hearts as well as heads.
Trends for the area are also important- where I live show a growth rate for the last 12 months of 1.4%, and 13% over 5 years versus national rates of -1.04 and -2.2 respectively- probably not much use in going in with a silly offer here.
Pay up and be happy is only really an option if you've got a big cash deposit. Most first time buyers will be relying on a mortgage, the bank aren't going to lend more than the house is 'worth' just because you really really like the house.
True but maybe you should really really like someting that actually in your price range and not 10% outside
It's a difficult game looking at houses outside your reach. Maybe they'll drop the price to your level and you'll feel a winner but often just get frustrated.
As of sunday I will be living with my parents rent free until I find a house. I will save a lot of money doing this so I am in no rush.
Lot of people at work telling me to put £152k in as its worth it.....
Lot of people at work telling me to put £152k in as its worth it.....
If they feel they have come down from 175k to 163k (how long ago?), if it was me I would feel an offer of 152K after an initial offer of 150K would be made by a timewaster. As if you are fretting about 2k, then would more than likely going to get even more shaky as the other costs start to roll in (mortgage setup fee's, solicitors etc)
As someone else said, a lot of cheaper housing is being bought up by foreign investors at the moment, as the rental market is very good, and offers better returns in 5-10 years than banks do at the moment.
As for prices, you can gamble on them going down, but bear in mind its a gamble that if you lose you are going to be potentially living with your parents for a very long time.
We're easily back at 2004/2005 prices in this area so if you were somewhere near me I'd say your max offer seems about right(assuming not masses of work done to the house since the owner bought). In fact the house we used to rent sold last year for the same price as they paid in 2002. It's very area dependent imo.
Just to counter those that are saying its not a buyers market at the moment. I recently bought a house, it was on the market for 160k, my first offer was 94k (60% of asking) final accepted offer was 105K but the place had been on the market for 2 years and the owner lived in Greece so it was empty. So there are bargains to be had it just depends on the sellers situation.
What I see locally (Pembrokeshire) is that the first time buyers houses, under 150k, aren't moving as there are very few first time buyers about. FTB's that do have the deposit find that companies refuse to lend on the smallest questionable thing in the survey so sellers are wary of FTB as only a small percentage actually go to completion. By that I mean saying in the offer large deposit, mortgage in principle etc carries less weight than it used to.
If I was in your situation I'd sit tight - if the place is a bargain it'll be snapped up and the last thing you want to be doing is entering a bidding war as a FTB. If the seller has to achieve a certain amount it will eventually be outweighed by the fact that they have a reason that is forcing them to sell.
It sold in 2003 for £125k. Id say a tidy £25k profit considering the times is not too bad.
Anyway, no point banging on about it, if they wont even entertain £150 with a counter offer then I see little hope of me getting it. I'll offer again in 4 weeks time if its still on the market.
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