Asking price is £230k, it needs fully refurbishing, but it is in the largest plot of a road on which the houses go for £300-350k.

The location for us is absolutely perfect, really could not be any better.

My ‘sensible’ budget it £300, might be able to go over this by £10-15k if it was not all done in one lump.

I spotted it this morning, sealed bids have to be in by Friday; going to see it tomorrow afternoon.

What would you bid?

Dave

ps – it has no garage, but has a 2 room cellar which I could make into the best man-cave ever!

I’d bid everything I could afford if I really wanted it.

Cellars are ace. As are night vision goggles.

no-one? bugger, I was hoping you would help and I could blame STW if I don’t (or if I do!) win the house.

On a different topic, has anyone got any opinions on the length of this piece of string?

Dave

Edit: I gave up too soon!!

bid before you go and see it, always bid well over what you can afford and listen to everything people say on the internet, oh and before you attempt to debunk my well thought out advice I suggest you consider the following:

everything I can afford does seem like a reasonable way to go. The estate agent says that there have already been 5 bids. I don’t know whether to assume that this is an outright lie, or to hope that they are developers who would be after a bargain, and therefore not bid high.

Argh!!! I think I really want it!!

Maybe that means I’m going to have to stump up the cash.

<sensible> Better wait until I have seen it </sensible>

Dave

Weigh up how much you want it, with how much it will cost to do up. Factor in what the going price is for the area……. if you really want it add, a bit on top. I’d be looking at less than £300,000 if I were you, though it’s impossible really to say!

We bought our house with a sealed bid – the bummer is, you never know how much higher your bid was, than the next highest.

Some things to consider:

It may need central heating, rewiring, new kitchen, bathrooms, extending/walls knocking through, carpets/wood flooring, new garage……. this could easily eat up £60,000+

Also if you are a cash buyer – this will act in your favour.

My calculations so far have been on the basis that £300-315k need to get it fully refurbished, so the bid will have to be at least £30-40k less than that.

Its a 3 bed semi, with only a downstairs bathroom, and an awkward kitchen in a single storey extension. I think it would be best to make the existing half width extension 2 storey (for an upstairs bathroom), and ‘fill in the gap’ to make a single storey, much bigger kitchen and bog downstairs.

I’m not completely new to this game, my current house was a total wreck, and I’ve done that up mostly off my own back – including rewiring, plumbing and even plastering (of small walls, not massive mirror finish ones).

Thinking that a £40k budget could see me to a full refurb and decorate with the extension I described, as long as I only get builders in to make the shell and do the rest myself and by friend/family power.

I keep coming back to the location and the garden – it is spitting distance from the park and school we want to be near and the garden is over 100ft (surrounded by tiny gardens on all the neighbouring houses and roads).

Stressful!

Dave

oh, and I’m not a cash bidder.. My house is going on the market this week (or next if the estate agents are useless – which obviously they are).

Dave

We got our house for £142,000 place was a total wreck – I added an extra floor on half of it, completely changed the layout – did all the work myself – materials came to £30,000 this was 6 years ago.

I suspect the higher end valuations in the same road will also have garages – so worth bearing that in mind.

From what you’ve said – £285,000 + 10% “must have it factor” =£287,850

One word: Survey, or we’ll all be seeing you with Sarah Beeney on that well know programme “Help me, I didn’t get a survey and my house is falling down”.

But TBH the fun of meeting Beeney would be good.

Don’t forget the 9k stamp duty 😯

Alfabus.
You say you are not a cash bidder, so if I understand you correctly you do not have the money unless you sell your own house?
If this is the case you cannot bid as you do not have the available monies. I think you should think long and hard about the situation you are in now and what would happen if the seller insist you payup, ie you could be without the new property and loose your old one.

We had a similar situation, put in an offer about 15% above asking. The winning bid was closer to 20% above asking when it appeared on houseprices.co.uk

Work out what you can afford allowing for all extra expenses and bid that. If it goes for more then it was too expensive and you couldn’t afford it. That’s the attitude we took.

My GF’s brother won a house in sealed bids by £100 so don’t put in a nice round number just like ebay 😉

To be honest, you haven’t got a hope.

The “sealed bids” is simply a way of the agent getting all interested parties to get their offers together, and get a sale underway quickly.

Unlike Scotland where solicitors conduct the bidding (and the’yre dishonest as hell anyway), the agent will simply work out how much his developer friend needs to bid to get it as they open the envelopes, and slip in one of a selection of carefully pre printed offers into the process.

Then the agent gets the commission in selling it, and then in selling it on in 6m when its been developed, and his developer friend makes a tidy profit, possibly slipping a back hander to allow the biding to go “smoothly”.

earbyphil, I think you are referring to the scottish system.. in englandshire sealed bids aren’t legally binding – they are just an alternative version of putting offers in and accepting/rejecting them. I’ve spoken to the estate agent, and they say they are not ruling out anyone (I told them I need to sell my house).

I’m suspicious of all estate agents, but they can’t all be crooks on the take can they? There is no cost involved with bidding, so I may as well put my best punt in and hope for minimal skullduggery (love that word). Worst that can happen is that I don’t get it.

futonrivercrossing, £285k+ might be a bit too close to the limit… £315k – £40k = £275 is probably my limit (plus some odd number of shrapnel to defeat the ebay style bidders.

Survey wise, from what I understand there is nothing stopping me doing a survey after the bid stage. I’ll take a look myself tomorrow.. I’m a good enough judge to be able to tell if it is going to fall down straight away or needs a new roof etc. I am assuming it will need replastering, rewiring and replumbing etc. so that is not a big worry.

If I have any doubts about subsidence or roof timbers etc. I might go for a survey. The ‘full structural survey’ I had done on my current house wasn’t worth the paper it was written on – full of caveats and get outs, it was a thick document that said absolutely nothing beyond “brick walls, tiled roof”.

Dave

From what you’ve said – £285,000 + 10% “must have it factor” =£287,850

I think you mean 1%. If not, there’s an adult edumacationthingeemabob with your name on it

Remember the estate agent works for the vendor. Have done the “sealed bids” thing and the “best and final offer” on a couple of houses and had the agent ring up on the closing day saying “you’ve been outbid, what’s your next bid?” Also rung up one vendor doing bids and asked them for a straight price higher than any existing bids for a quick cash sale and got it at 7% over asking price. Go have a good poke about first anyway. Good luck.

I’ve only met a couple I’d trust.

One of them was me. The other one was the chap I worked with at the time.

Neither his predecessor nor forbear were people I’d trust, and I never met apart from a couple of weekend staff, any I’d trust either. It comes with the territory.

I tried being honest. People sadly don’t want honesty in estate agents.

If you get 4 agents round to value your house, then 9/10 instruct the one who gives the “biggest” value.

I used to work in a town on Salisbury Plain, where a lot of houses were similar. I could go to someones house, point to several I;d sold, pointing out the intricacies of price (the market was barely moving at the time!) and give a likely value to within £500, given there were usually plenty for sale.

And time after time, people would go elsewhere, to the “big name agent” who routinely over valued, and then spent the 3m of their sole agency trying to get the price down.

People like to be flattered, and hate to think they might be losing out, so they believe lies quite easilly…..

If it’s going to sealed bids I’d walk away unless you want to get bum raped. IMO it’s just a way for agents to get people into a bidding frenzy – great for the vendor, bad for the buyer. In the current market that and the open house are about the only tools they’ve got left I reckon (apart from pricing sensibly and being honest of course).

Bottom line if you really like the place and want to bid, as already said above, work out what you can afford and what you feel the place is worth to you and bid that. Be prepared to be disappointed as if you’re not even on the market yet it’s unlikely you’ll be treated preferentially.

We’ve been waiting for the right place to come along for 2 years now (in rented) and have been sorely disappointed on a couple of places, but that’s the way it goes. If it’s taught us anything it’s that even if you think you’ve found the perfect place, the next place is perfect too!

I forgot to say – after our sealed bid was accepted we managed to get a couple of grand off the price, after a survey raised a few issues.

Update:

I went to see it yesterday, and it is in much better condition than I thought. It will need full refurbishment, and definitely needs an extension (the bathroom and kitchen are inadequate), but structurally it is very good, no blown plaster and the roof looks fine. New boiler was installed last year (although the radiators look older than that), insulation also good.

Downsides:

The cellar rooms don’t have much headroom, and have quite a bit of damp.. I think one of them is high enough to make a bike workshop, but making it properly habitable would be mega-money – perhaps something to keep as a 10 years down the line project.
There is no off-road parking (I knew this before I went), and the road is quite tricky to park in – I was there at 3pm and it was tough to find a space.

Conclusion of visit:

I want it, the location and aspect are perfect. However, I’m going to have to pay over the odds to get it because I am not a cash bidder.

I would guess that any chancers and developers will not go above 250k, since that is the stamp duty threshold. If I want it (with the delay of selling my house), I think I’m going to have to bid at least 270k, leaving me £30k to renovate it and 15k of fees on top.

Oh, the estate agent told me that the house over the road, big extension but smaller garden sold last month for £389k !! I know for a fact that one down the road sold for £340k.

Bids due in on Friday…. stressful times!

Dave

put in low, when you lose ask what the winner was and then offer more if its under your max price. Essentially I am saying don’t fall for their tricks, it’s not legally binding so lots of sealed bids get gazumped later, and get a survey.

The problem with putting in low is that the house is in probate. If there are several relatives waiting for a lump of cash so they can go on holiday, they may just take the highest cash offer (which I doubt will be more than 250k as I said above).

I think my offer needs to be high enough to tempt them into waiting for a month or two to close the deal.

Or am I thinking about this too much?

Dave

If its the perfect house for you, then go all out to get it. Doing it up as you go sort of masks how much you’ll really be spending anyway. And if you sit tight you’ll make the money up eventually anyway. Would you want to miss out on what could be your ideal home for the next 10-20 years for the sake of £20k…?

I’ve lost a few potential “perfect” homes when I’ve moved over the years, through arguing over £10k here, £15k there. If asked now, should I have just gone the extra to get the right place, then the answer is always yes.

Yeah maybe. Do you knwo how long ti takes to buy a house? Accepting the offer and getting the money are separated by weeks of mucking around, so the going on holiday thing is moot, just make a bigger offer after the sealed bid is over. That’s what I would do as I refuse to engage with estate agents ruses to bump the price up.

Ps five offers already? Bollocks. estate agents are all lying scum, never met an honest one.

Go in at 251K – to beat the developers
and then do some sort of deal with the seller to bring the price under the SD threshold

I’ve no idea what I’m talking about but it sounds plausible to me 😀

toys19, Yeah, I know it is not an instant process – my holiday example was just to say that relatives of the former occupant won’t necessarily be willing to hang on for 10 or 20k higher price, since if they have to divide it 3 or 4 ways anyway it won’t be worth their while.

I think I’m going to have to word my bid email very carefully, to get across the point that I’m bidding a generous amount and I anticipate selling my house quite quickly (so my estate agent tells me ;)).

If I am still in the running after all that, I will start trying to do a deal with them where I pay 250k, then pay a chunk on top for fixtures and fittings…. although since it is an empty shell needing refurb that might be tricky – perhaps I could buy the grass and allotment vegetables from them.

Dave

The house may well be perfect for you, but it’s very important to try to take emotion out of the equation, that way bad decisions lie.

We have recently been through an analagous process, looked like we were going to lose the house, it was very stressful as the house was “perfect” for us.

Good luck, but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it.

Watch out on stamp duty avoidance/evasion. It’s a bit of a hot topic with the authorities at the moment apparently.

Have the other houses that sold ‘big’ have offroad parking? I’d always walk away from a place I couldn’t reasonably guarantee I could park in front of (especially as you said parking was ‘tricky’). And don’t forget, even 6 months ago places were selling for more than what they would in these times.

If you like it, think you’ve seen nothing better then go all in. And don’t kill yourself for the rest of your days saying ‘I wish we’d put in a £10k smaller offer’ like my missus would do…

Get it, knock a bit off for any survey issues.

It’s funny how people approach house buying so differently. The house the OP wants to buy sounds so far from ideal (to me) it’s untrue! No parking, needs a refurb, needs an extension etc etc all says “no thanks” to me! Good luck if it’s what you’re after OP, but as mentioned above I’d be taking a good step back and trying to look at it as objectively as possible 🙂

Got a link so we can have a look?

The others I mentioned that sold for big money were virtually identical, apart from the difference I described – none on that road have off-street parking.

Different strokes for different folks; I’d hate to buy somewhere that was all done up and ready to move in. For starters it wouldn’t have been done by someone who had bikes, so there wouldn’t be any provision for them – plus all my other unique tastes and needs which renovating it myself will cater for. I have no problem with anyone who doesn’t think like that, you are all there to provide a market for those of us who do up the house first and have to sell it later. That said, I’m not in for a quick buck, I hope to live there for 20 years plus, so 10k here or there doesn’t make a massive difference.

I will post a link once the bids are closed… don’t want any of you buggers muscling in on the deal 😉 especially now I have revealed all of my secret tactics 😆

Dave

latest update:

Didn’t get it 🙁

Ours was the highest bid, and they considered it for a long time (didn’t give us an answer until Saturday lunchtime). In the end they went with a lower offer from some buyers whose house is sold subject to contract (ours has had a few viewings, and particulars are being published today).

This is the house. With any luck, the deal will fall through and they will come back to us.

For now though, the search continues… Thanks for the advice and encouragement stw.

Dave

What offer did you put in?

Have you made it 100% clear you remain interested if the other deal falls through – you need to make that as clear as you possibly can – even put it in writing.

We offered 270k

They know we are still interested, and have said that if the deal falls through with their chosen buyer, they will come back to us.

If we get a cash buyer for our house, I will be straight on the phone to them to see if they want to gazump their buyer and come back to us. I don’t count this as really gazumping, since we did offer more money in the first place 🙂

Dave

All the best then.

We are in a broadly similar position, having offered (and had rejected) a bid for an empty, lender-owned, ‘do-er upper’ property. And four weeks later it is still on the market because it is simply overpriced as it is. We are just gonna wait it out and offer again in a couple of months.

Looking at that house makes you realise that there must be nothing wrong with the housing market in the UK. OK it’s got a nice garden but Jeesus 230k for a little end terrace which hasn’t seen any work since the 80’s.

It’s the location though isn’t it.

In Harrogate they go for broadly similar prices whereas 15 or so miles away south of York you could get a 4 bed detatched house with a massive plot for the same money.

I agree but this is still a world away from the doom mongering we have all been expecting. Ok if people were dumb enough to buy newly built 2 bed flats for £275K then they may well have lost half their money but I cannot see that this property has lost anything significant in the last three years. If the current owner has owned for more than 7 years I’ll bet they have made a packet.

Looking at that house makes me glad I live in a cheap part of the country!

Well yeah I tend to agree toys. Some houses have plummeted in value (such as some city-centre new build flats where entire floors remain unsold in big buildings.

But a perfect location will (generally) always be a perfect location so the house prices will remain more robust.

But yes – most houses that were bought more than about 7 years ago will have increased in value considerably.