So, buying a house. Where does a fair offer become taking the michael?

After a chat with the bank here in Oz over valuations etc. It was agreed the fair market value was whatever offer was accepted. If a house is worth more then someone will offer more.

If your the only one interested then what you will pay is what it’s worth.

Weather they sell or not is up to them.

however there’s a lot more demand than supply,

Eh? No, I’m sorry, that’s the wrong way round. Right now there’s massive supply, no demand.

One bit of slightly unconventional advice, don’t be scared of just making the offer you want to pay and sticking to it.
It may just be a personal thing, but I view the “offer low and be prepared to increase a little” as a more difficult game to win. It’s a bit like playing poker, but with the seller represented by a profesional. So you choose to play bridge instead 😉

Not sure how the english system works but why not just offer what you want? If they say no then perhaps you can make a higher bid? I recently sold my flat for a stupidly low price (I hated where I stayed and had two break ins to my flat, mainly my bikes stolen, wthin a few months) but made sure that the purchase of my new house reflected that. If they had said no I would have gone elsewhere, its a buyers market.

We’re looking to buy at the minute & have just started viewing a few properties. Our max price is probable £250,000 to avoid stamp duty (the bank will give us a bigger mortgage but we probably don’t have the extra £8k for duty).

We’ve been looking at stuff upto £285,000 in the hope no chain is in our favour & they may be tempted…fingers crossed we tempt someone.

It’s a bit like playing poker, but with the seller represented by a profesional.

It can seem that way, but the estate agent is primarily interested in getting a sale – not necessarily maximising the amount.

Samurai, nope, not in the middle of Bath, if you want a 4 bed house within 5mins walk to the city centre with a garden (although small) for under £375k. There’s litrally a queue to buy. I was aiming to sell last May, 16 viewings and 7 offers in 36 hours. This time I accepted an offer of asking price in 3 days.

Samurai, nope, not in the middle of Bath, if you want a 4 bed house within 5mins walk to the city centre with a garden (although small) for under £375k. There’s litrally a queue to buy. I was aiming to sell last May, 16 viewings and 7 offers in 36 hours. This time I accepted an offer of asking price in 3 days.

That seems to be quite a rarity on the whole though, certainly in my experience of moving and from one area and looking to buy in another.

It’s a bit like playing poker, but with the seller represented by a profesional.

i don’t think so. In the end he gets his commission when the house sells. Assuming a rate of 1.5%, every £1000 extra he negotiates the price up, makes another £15, of which I guess the agent would get only part anyway.

Is it really worth having to keep plugging the same old house to another load of buyers time after time for another £50 or 60 quid minus tax in his pocket, just because the seller wants to hang on for another few thousand. It’s a big deal for them, getting that last few thousand, but for the agent – persuade them to sell now because what they’ve been offered is actually pretty fair for the area, bank the cash and move on to another. Far better to turn over a couple of houses at a few thou below the actual value but quickly, than one at or above market rate.

I think the only reason most people use an agent is because it’s so terribly unbritish to haggle face to face, hence we pay a middle man to do it for us. I’d happily haggle direct, but if no-one else wants do you’re still stuck using an agent anyway. The bigger issue therefore i think is that when we look for an agent, the temptation is to go for the one who values it the highest rather than honestly, and thus the haggling process exists.

In Scotcheggland, it’s not always offers over but a mix of that and fixed price. When we bought where we live now, we got lucky in that the market had taken a huge drop for bigger stuff in the area we wanted to live (our place dropped by well over £100k from going on the market to us buying it) but we managed to sell our two flats within 6 and 5 days respectively from going to market and above the valuation. In both cases, we did the marketing ourselves. Home made signs, small advert in the GSPC website etc. The Home Report was great as it gave us a sense of the value to expect and we were happy with what we got.

With Home Reports, I definitely got the sense that the imbalance between the buyer and seller shifted so that the buyer has a much more informed idea of what to pay.

Having said that, we looked at a place in Hyndland where we made an offer and the chap selling claimed to have had two significantly higher offers. However, speaking to the Estate Agent negotiater, she was a bit taken aback by this and let slip that there had been no offers. We politely withdrew the offer and laughed at her client’s chancer like behaviour. 😀

Offer what you think it is worth to you. There are no hard and fast rules to negotiating. You might just get lucky!

As for Estate Agents, they are more a hinderance than a help. I had the negotiator for our purchase tell me the couple we bought from were on holiday over the weekend when we made and offer and were uncontactable so could not make a decision. Oddly enough, I had spoken to them immediately before making the offer and they weren’t on holiday. There’s nothing like someone lying to you in order to get you to panic and up an offer that irritates me! 👿

Samurai, nope, not in the middle of Bath, if you want a 4 bed house within 5mins walk to the city centre with a garden (although small) for under £375k. There’s litrally a queue to buy. I was aiming to sell last May, 16 viewings and 7 offers in 36 hours. This time I accepted an offer of asking price in 3 days.

That seems to be quite a rarity on the whole though, certainly in my experience of moving and from one area and looking to buy in another.[/quote]

Yes, exactly that. That’s why I’ve got far more off the new house than I would accept off mine. That’s the point I was trying to make about areas and different properties having different expectations of discount

Edit – can’t do mutiple quotes but I’m sure you get the idea!

^^^ Not as rare as you’d think. We’ve been looking for something resembling value for over a year now. The kind of places we’re looking for (standard 3/4 bed family home) in our area (Hants/Berks/Surrey borders) are going for silly money still within days of coming to market, with multiple offers, and fairly often for over asking.

All very depressing, I’ve no idea where people are getting the money from but there seems to be a lot of it sloshing around.

The kind of places we’re looking for (standard 3/4 bed family home) in our area (Hants/Berks/Surrey borders) are going for silly money still within days of coming to market, with multiple offers, and fairly often for over asking.

Interesting. I moved from Bucks/Herts/Beds border (Tring) last December, and things were pretty stagnant over stamp duty as that was exactly what we were looking for. Anything with three beds at stamp duty or under seemed to move pretty fast.

The bigger issue therefore i think is that when we look for an agent, the temptation is to go for the one who values it the highest rather than honestly, and thus the haggling process exists.

^^^ this. People get a couple of Estate Agents in and pick the one who’ll sell it for the most money. But it doesn’t, it sits on the market for a year because it’s overpriced and then they flog it for a knock down price as they get desperate.

Cheeky bid, but also include reasons why it’s a cheeky bid (without obviously saying it’s cheeky 😀 ) – no chain involved, mortgage approved, needs work doing etc. etc.