Is this a rude offer for a house?

[Taq]

House is £850k. We’d be offering 765k, maximum 775k.

First time buyers so totally new to this. Would it be an offensive offer?

765k is 10% off.
775k is 8.8% off.

We’re not in a chain if that makes a difference, and the house has been on the market nearly a month. It’s at a high price for the area but is a beautiful house with not much comparable.

Thank you!

Just be honest, give them your best and final from the outset, and see what happens.

We're buying a house we low-balled an offer on initially, but they refused (10% below asking). We came back with our best and final (5k below asking) and should be moving in soon, fingers crossed. It wasn't worth it for us to be messing about with back and forth negotiations. Or to miss out on it entirely.

Me too, and I wouldn’t much want to sell it you even if you upped your offer. When I’ve engaged with low offers in the past the buyers turned out to be such piss takers. Lesson learned.

So offering £100k less

Seems a lot

Tho offering 10% less is often normal

It's supply and demand

A month isn't long so likely to say no

Always worth a try, the worst that can happen is they say no.

Ah ok!
Sorry I'm in Canada so it's different here.

Here the buyers and sellers have their own agents that look out for them. The buying agent would research comparable houses and help you come up with a fair price. Then they negotiate on your behalf. Everything is done between the agents.

In a house worth £200K, offering 10% below would be reasonable. On higher priced houses, when 10% is almost a hundred grand, I would be very surprised to see it accepted.

Absolutely. That’s the difference, when you get into higher numbers it’s not about the percentage but the absolute number.

I’d think you were a chancer and then wonder why you’d bothered viewing an £850k house if you were only prepared to offer a max of £775k. Is that all you can afford? I think you’ll be turned down. As another poster said I’d be looking for offers starting at an 8. Anything less is a time waster.

@Taq don't be confused. Just decide what the max price you are prepared to pay for that and offer a little under that as it's usually normal for a little negotiation.

If the house has only been on the market for a month it's most likely that an under 800 offer will be refused. They will think they can get closer to the price they've set. It's totally different if it's languished on the market for months and months.

If 775 is your budget max then that's all you can offer as you can't magic up extra cash.

And don't worry about offending the vendors. It is a low offer but they don't have to accept it.

What @Uncooperativefingers said.

The converse to not having much info because not much has sold round there, is that it's somewhere people like to live so it's likely to be desirable. And after only a month I would be amazed if they accepted your offer. You never know I guess.

I'd say make the offer you want to make but be prepared to either wait months or to walk away. Tbh if someone offered me 10% off my current house I'd wonder why they weren't looking at cheaper houses - there are quite a few out there.

It's not confusing. Bang an offer in and take it from there.

She already said in the post that it's 10% off

If I had my house on for £850 (unlikely!) I wold be wanting an offer beginning with an 8

Me too, especially if I’d only been on the market for less than a month. I honestly wouldn’t waste your time or theirs.

How did @Taq get on?

Not rude, just cheeky. They can only say no.

Yes I'm intrigued too @Taq. Have you moved in by now? What did you offer and how did it go?
Where in the country was it?

Oh and FWIW I'd say there's no such thing as "rude"- you can chance your arm, try a cheeky offer, try your luck etc, but it's not offensive to try a low offer as PPs have said - you never know what position the seller is in, or whether the house is overvalued etc.

Yes it very much depends whether the seller wants to move quickly/has their eye on another house, particularly if someone is downsizing and has found their own dream house which they don't want to lose out on.
A house is only worth what the market is willing and able to pay for it.

We recently completed on a house that was up for £550k and we offered £470k BUT it had been up for sale for 18 months before we offered on it. There's no way they would have accepted our offer after a month.
The whole house buying thing in the UK is mad, expecting a discount. I wish they'd just price the houses sensibly and you buy it at the price it's advertised at!!

I wouldn't offer that much below. 10 or 20k but nit 10%. When houses are that price, it's a big drop and they will think you are time wasters. We're selling soon and I wouldn't look at offers below 5% drop, if the house is priced correctly to begin with.

NB this is an old thread. The original post was from April! She will have offered or not long ago by now.