As per title going to view a property which has gone on the market today which I’ve learned via the agent that it has been part-exchanged against a new-build and so would be dealing with a business-seller as a opposed to an individual-seller.

Any advice on offers/how low to go – it’s priced sensibly at 235K but I’m wondering how much margin part-exchanges usually work on?

An offer so low you feel embarassed saying it, then a bit lower. You can always go up, rarely can you go down.

An offer so low you feel embarassed saying it, then a bit lower. You can always go up, rarely can you go down.

Unless the house is already well priced and sells on the first day.

I would expect they’ll be more business minded when it comes to the sale, and have a price which they’ll sell for. I’d agree with offering low, they’ll probably come back with a counter and you can go from there. It’d probably be a quicker purchase for you than buying from a normal seller

We bought a house that had been sold as part exchange, Through Bovis. Their solicitors were really unpleasant to deal with so if you do make an offer be prepared to get bombarded by pushy corner cutting twits

My mum used to work in the property services industry selling houses such as this (but more often repos). From what she told me some time ago, 5lab has it right – they will have a base price (no business wants to make a loss) and a sliding scale of how long it’s been on the market / how much less than asking they are willing to accept.

If it’s just come on, don’t expect much of a discount (maybe 0-1%). If it sticks around for a month, you might get 3-5%.

Unless it’s your dream house and you absolutely must have it I’d go for an offer 7-10% under asking, expecting a counter offer. If there are other interested parties, you’ll get a chance to go higher if you want to.

That said, the agent may have already been instructed by the vendor not to entertain offers  in which case you’ll get a quick answer 😛

Bung em’ £10k in a brown envelope, then make a cheeky offer.

Nudge nudge/wink wink.

🤷‍♂️🥳

Don’t they offer the original owner something like 30% less than market value ?

My builder told me they start off with a very competitive price then drop it every week till the house sells.

Normally priced to sell within 6 weeks. They will probably be unlikely to shift on the price immediately. Can’t hurt to put in a low offer but if they accept straight away make sure it’s not got problems.

@Funkydunc – not any more. Market value based on 3 surveys.

If you are going to get screwed over royally, it is most likely to be a big firm that will do it. Caveat Emptor. Get a specilaist solic/conveyancer and make them work for their money.

I bought my house exactly like this, part-ex from the builder. Had been on the market for a few months and the estate agent told me it was now at the lowest price they would go down to. My solicitor offered lower but got absolutely no movement at all on the price, it really was as low as they would go.

Be prepared for conditions in the sale where they won’t guarantee anything left there, unlike a normal sale where you can complain if bits and pieces aren’t working as expected their contract was essentially a sold as seen type contract. Fairly painless sale though apart from those points.

I bought a house which had been part exchanged when the old sellers were buying a new build.

Mine was about 5-10% lower than its market value and priced for a quick sale (the new build developers just wanted rid of it)

If it has just gone on the market, you like it and it’s reasonably priced just offer the asking price.

If (like my situation) it was owned by a bank, had been on the market for several months and you had just been told the lowest offer the bank would accept by the estate agent then offer less than that (I offered £25k less). We eventually agreed on £18k lower than their ‘lowest’ price which was some £53k lower than the price it was on the market for.

What he said, if you like it, it’s the right house and think it’s reasonably priced, buy it. Haggling over a few grand will only save you a few quid a month in mortgage payments.

Life’s too short.

I bought a house off a bank, they were transparent about their lowest price when rejecting my initial offer and the “bottom line” they came back with was very fair.

Unless it’s your dream house and you absolutely must have it I’d go for an offer 7-10% under asking, expecting a counter offer

You should probably caveat that with where in the country you are, if you tried that in Reading I’d be surprised if the EA even called you back! Most stuff seemed to be going for asking price or higher unless you were looking at a real fixer upper. We managed to get a whopping 2% off for a house that hadn’t been decorated properly since it was built in the 70’s!

a house that hadn’t been decorated properly since it was built in the 70’s!

Our house (as mentioned above) was in a similar state – it was new in 1985 and was bought by an older couple. It still had the original carpets and only one room had ever been redecorated in that time (just painting over the original blown vinyl wallpaper). I also had a 3ft deep fatberg to dig out of the main drain when we noticed that the garden was a pond every time we used water downstairs. Five years later and we have just finished the final room (steadfastly ignoring the utility) and about to start redecorating our girls’ rooms.

Bought ours like that, although we knew the owner and got it before it went on open market after they’d PX for their new one. Was very easy to deal with, offer in and as others said it was lower than market so no movement and we were happy with that. The building company then had ours in PX to this one, so again a lower offer but guaranteed quick sale for us and less £ tied-up in buildings for them. They put it on the market whilst we were still in it. All went through smoothly, better than a private vendor I’d say. They also were happy for us to have their survey for our use (at our risk clearly), their surveyor (independent) also gave us advice and no selling agents fees either.

We part ex’d our house last year, for a new build. Three EA valuations, they offered us the average of the three.
We also had another done, by another EA, as a reference.
All went through quickly & easily.
When our old house eventually sold it was about 4% less than the lowest valuation. The Company was Move With Us, who were very fair, efficient & actually nice to do business with.

I was on the other side, we part exchanged our house for a new build and the developer got us to show the house. It was great, we were able to be totally honest with viewers and tell them what needed done etc. I understand they sold it for 20k less than they gave us. (Which was a fair price)

Have just done this – buying a part-ex off a developer.

Benefits are that it caps the chain, the developers are working on cash flow and want to get the property moved on, so a cheeky offer is always work it.

As mentioned above, it’s a “sold as seen”, so don’t expect everything to be perfect (we’ve a whole series of ugly rawplugs left in the walls, and some unpainted filler around one of the windows. Check what appliances are included before you make your offer and adjust appropriately. When we first viewed, the prior owners were still resident, they’d offered the range oven as an “extra”, which the developers didn’t take – so we had a 90cm gap to fill. Fortunately we’d factored that into our offer.

Dealing with the developers company was pretty smooth (Moving Made Easy), only niggle was not getting all the keys on completion day, they were at the new site sales office (about 200m walk) and the fun of completing on the day of the O2 network outage, confirming that we had completed so that we could get the keys and start unloading took a little longer than ideal.

And one other piece of advice. Don’t sneak an extra foot or so of back garden onto that land that “nobody owns”, and then build a summer house on it. Highways are way less flexible than a farmer might be when it comes to selling that small bit of land you taken from them. Like our original buyers did, which caused the chain to collapse.