over offer on a house

[housemovehell]

So dh and I see a house we like , it needs a lot doing. We both want to offer on it.

Dh says offer 15k below the "in excess of" price which we know has just been reduced by 15k. I say I think that's a bit insulting I think 10tk would be more reasonable.

He says ok. I find a bit more info which means about 2k more work than we had planned. So ask if we should still offer same. He says yes.

Tonight I get home he says we should have offered 15k below as they never take first offer and he wouldn't pay any more than our current offer.

Now we haven't had an answer yet but if they do say no somehow this is gonna be my fault because I didn't listen?

Always offer less because then you have some excess for negotiation

It's too random to comment on. We offered 10k under on a house that had just had the asking price reduced, they came back and said 'here is what we want', we said 'ok then'. You need to leave room for negotiation but also I think it's better to always be upfront about what you have or are willing to offer.

Well I thought we had but now after the event, he tells me he wouldn't pay any more. If he had said that is out final offer to start with and discusses it like a grown up we wouldn't be on this argument.

I think he wants too much for what he is willing to pay. He wants a bargain basement property without being willing to do the work, take the risks, or make the sacrafices that come with that.

Our solicitor always says beware of making statements about final offers cos you either have to follow through or you look like an eejit re-negotiating.

I think he's being staggeringly naive if he's not prepared for some negotiation on price. So if he persists in this attitude I don't hold out much hope, tbh!

Me either. It has taken such a long time to get to the position where we can actually make an offer on a house and now I feel like we are never going to move because he is unrealistic in his expectations. And I am unreasonable for telling him.

Yes, and I would assume that if the owner is asking for "offers in excess of" then it is fairly clear what the bottom line is. The more normal "offers around" scenario would lead one to expect to be able to do some meaningful negotiations.

I don't mean that I would go in with the starting price btw, just that I would expect the finally agreed price to be fairly close to x (ie offers above x).

So, probably your DH is naive if he thinks he'll get it for significantly less.

Let's wait and see though.

To be fair our flat was advertised at offers in excess of and we did end up accepting a little lower. But if someone offered 15 k lower I would have told them to jump!

X post. To be honest I thought final price would be 5 to 7 under so somewhere in middle. But he's having none of it.

The really galling bit is that in his mind if we don't get it it will be my fault for offering to high straight out, not his fault for expecting too much off.

I think it can depend on things like price, on a house up for 130k we put in 123 and were accepted at 125

On a more expensive house that was 250 we got it for 233, I think there can be abit more room for negotiation on higher priced houses

But yes with offers in excess of you know they arnt going to want to budge too much on the price

But isn't the 'excess of' figure the 'if we're lucky' price nowadays?

Probably! The house the OP is looking at has only just had its price reduced though, so the vendors are going to wait a while yet, I reckon, before giving up on getting lucky.

Well today is the day I thought we would buy a house but its actually the day we go back to square 1

Try not to feel down about it - there is often no rhyme nor reason to what vendors will accept and whilst I agree they often won't take a first offer if they have decided they want x they won't take y whether it is your first or fiftieth offer.

Ultimately you have to find a house that you are willing to pay x for and the vendors are willing to sell for the same. Game playing in relation to property is overrated.

They could still come back to you OP.

In their head they will be hoping for something nearer the price they have only just reduced to, so they will want to see if the price reduction attracts any more interest.

If that interest never materialises, or doesn't result in any further offers, they could get back to you. Houses have been known to have sales agreed that then fall through and an earlier interested party who thought they had missed out then goes on to buy it (was admin in estate agents office for six loooong years).

But don't do the "this is our final offer and you are lucky to get it" thing. That will only wind them up.

And FWIW, when we bought last year, we offered on one of the first houses we saw and the agent wouldn't even put our offer through because we weren't officially SSTC yet.

They were a bit sneery at us too and we were upset to find out the house was sold just a week after we offered on it.

That sale fell through and they rang us practically begging us to go back for a second look (the house had been empty for two years and on the market for almost a year).

But not only had we sold by then...we'd found a bigger, better house on the same street but for less money and without all the work that needed doing on the first house!

So even if you don't get this house, something even more perfect could be waiting for you today.

I have always thought like that but I have never had to deal with buying a house while dealing with the stupid expectations of my husband. O think he fancies himself as a bit of a developer and has forgotten developers aren't trying to make a home!

The house for which I get the keys today (yayyyyy) was at a fixed price of £335k (Scotland). The original valuation was £350k.

I offered £315k and got it for £325k i.e. £25k below valuation and £10k below the fixed price. There was damp work to be done (scored the lowest (3) in the wretched Home Reports which we still have up here), which I agreed to have done. At least I thought I had. When I went round last week to measure up, the damp had been fixed with a 30 year guarantee in place!! That's probably saved me even more.

Contests on the new house.

I am a bit down atm and fear stuff like that just doesn't happen to us.

Oh that was supposed to say congrats on new house. Predictive text fail!

I think your biggest problem is that you and your husband seem so far apart on this. Have you told him he's being a pillock?

housemovehell, I can totally sympathise as DH was just like this when we were looking to buy. I had been looking for nearly a year but every house I saw and liked, there was some reason to reject it. He was just being totally unrealistic about what he could get for his money (this was at the height of the boom) and driving me crazy.

The only reason why we bought a place in the end was because I ignored him and just put an offer in (at asking) on a place I liked without him looking at it. Obviously he was fuming but reluctantly went ahead with it because he didn't really have any alternatives as to the small practical issue of where we were going to live if we didn't buy somewhere soon. Five years later, he will happily admit that I was quite right and it is a fab house and the best place he has ever lived. We've outgrown it now and will need to move again soon, but he doesn't want too! I have a feeling that we're going to have to go through the whole palavar of nothing being good enough again but this time I'll be a lot firmer a lot sooner.