To think being 'offended' by an offer to buy your house..

[slingingtothemusicinmyhead]

Is a bit over dramatic?

Currently put in an offer on a house. 15% below asking price.

It's over priced. It's priced similar to other houses on the street that have recently sold but it needs a bit of work (new kitchen, ancient electrics etc) and those houses had been thoroughly modernised.

They're offended and do not want to hear from us again.

Is this sort of hysterical behaviour now normal when buying and selling houses?

They are not hysterical , they just think you are a time waster

If your house is on the market you need to develop a thick skin and a sense of humour

Add to that an appreciation that it's a business transaction, not an assessment of your personal worth. I'm not at all surprised the place has been for sale a while; at this rate it may be a lot longer and they may still have problems with whoever buys it

And I've recently sold/bought myself, in record time ... but then I was realistic enough to accept 12% less on mine and the sellers took 14% less on theirs

Give them a few weeks and they'll be back asking if you'd like to make another offer.

It's a bit OTT for a vendor to tell a potential buyer they are offended by an offer. Everyone knows lower offers will be made. I would have thought an estate agent would not have told you they were 'offended', it's unprofessional.

Forget about them, there will be other houses - or, who knows, those vendors might come back to you if no-one else is prepared to pay what they ask.

Do people really just offer the asking price straight off?

Of course they do if it's new on the market and exactly what they want. We put our house on the market last September and had 14 viewings in less than a week. Most viewers were interested but not many in a position to proceed. We had 2 offers of the asking price within a week and took the one from cash buyers.

I don't think vendors should get offended but I realise there are those who take low offers personally. The place we bought had been on the market for 12 months, so we put a low offer in. I was embarrassed by the offer my husband suggested, so I made him make the call (I thought the vendor would tell us to take a long walk off a short plank). They did reject it but we held our nerve (we were determined to be mortgage free) and after a bit of to'ing and fro'ing and telling us how much the carpets had cost etc. they accepted, mainly because they didn't need to make X to buy Y which we had to do.

My DH once bought a house from a famous footballer. The bloke wanted DH to buy the carpets but he declined, When it came to moving in day everything removable had gone,,including the light bulbs

I wouldn't want to deal with someone who offered that far below either, at least not without a good reason. If I say X, that is the number I want to sell for. If I struggle to get an offer at that level I will drop the price. 🤷🏿‍♀️

I’ve got to say, 15% below sounds like you’re not that fussed. Which to be fair, you’re not, so maybe they read you right. At least they aren’t wasting your time and you can concentrate on the other properties on your list.

Send us the link

I offered 4k over the asking price on our current place. That was on the proviso they completed quickly and that it also included a lease extension to take the lease to 125 years (the sellers were the freeholders). That 4k would of saved us a lot of money down the line while only costing the sellers minimal legal fees for the extension. I think we saved about 10k on not waiting the 2 years for a lease extension. As it happens we now have purchased the freehold but we didn't know that when we bought a few years ago.

When it came to moving in day everything removable had gone,,including the light bulbs

The Germans do this routinely, even the oven racks.

I think your response is “overly dramatic”

Someone tells you that you have offended them.

You then post on mumsnet multiple times expressing, in pretty OTT language, how dramatic they are!

These were my thoughts exactly!

As for their offence, I think 15% off is a lot.

Surely whether 15% is a lot off or not depends on the area, condition of the house etc. Where we are house prices are dropping quite fast but some vendors will still ask far above current market prices. Which is their prerogative but they’ll obviously get low offers or none in this situation.

15% is a lot! That's £37K off a £250,000 house or £150K off a £1m house. Unless the house was a complete wreck that was going to need comprehensive work, or unless it was really obviously overpriced compared to other houses of the same type sold in that area in the first place, I'd be quite offended too. I think it's OK to offer up to £20K lower than the asking price if you're chancing your arm. Any more than that and as a vendor I would expect you to be able to justify it by reference to how much you would need to spend to make it habitable. I wouldn't be reducing my asking price because the buyer wants an extension or doesn't like the colour scheme.

If it was a really silly offer, I'd dismiss you as not having enough money to pay a realistic price for the property. And if you then brought your price up to something sensible I'd be anxious about whether you were going to turn round the day before exchange and say that you were only prepared to pay the low price you'd initially offered. I've had a sale fall through because of the former silly buggerness and friends have had the latter situation.

I think "offended" is a bit silly but it is important to think about the message you're sending with your offer. The vendors don't know you. They've got to try and work out whether it's worth banking on you as their purchaser from the limited dealings they have with you during a very fraught process. I know everyone thinks it's important to act like they don't care if they get the house they're bidding on or not but as a vendor I would be far more receptive to negotiating with someone who I felt really loved the house. I realise that makes me a bit of an idiot.

Btw, the agent sounds rubbish. All they needed to say was that the vendors were only interested in a full asking price offer. If you came back with one, they might have found a way to be less offended. If you didn’t, no harm done.

I just had the same. The house has been a rental for sometime and has been tenant free for a couple of months. It hasn't been updated since the 50s, has wallpaper on the ceilings, needs a new heating system, full rewire and it also has "structural problems" that the vendor is apparently sorting. We offered 15% under as we felt this would be the cost to get it to the standard you would expect if paying the full asking price.

Vendor rejected our offer (as we expected) but instead of starting negotiations the EA said " the vendor is looking for O.I.E.O the asking price". I just laughed and said "good luck to them". The house is still on the market...

I'd say (and I do have some knowledge) that my ceiling figure would have reflected the work that needs doing. Would've worked out at 10% off the asking price. My surveyors may suggest more.

The gas and electrics would be illegal in a private rent for a start. They've priced as if it's immaculate.

I'm a cash buyer too.

But they'll never know any of that...

We offered 15% under as we felt this would be the cost to get it to the standard you would expect if paying the full asking price.

Those factors would already have been taken into account by the agent when arriving at a valuation based on comparable properties in the area.

I wouldn’t accept a lower offer based on what the buyer wanted to do to my house. That for them to fund.

*that’s not that

Yeh we had similar. £500k house, way overpriced really, offered £450 as a starting point with a view to going up to £470 max. It was nice enough in places but needed some stuff doing to it. Owner could not have been more offended if I'd shat in a napkin and handed it to her. 3 months later and it's not sold and has been reduced 3 times and is now on for £460 making my £450 offer look pretty reasonable. We've found a much nicer house so its fun to watch the price drop from afar.

They may just have been testing the market, OP, with no particular inclination to sell cheap. You think the house is priced 'as if immaculate' but they obviously don't, because they were offended by your low ball offer.

Yep, you're definitely a buyer I wouldn't want to deal with.

Calling bullshit on this one, given you're only talking in percentages and not figures. Your only problem seems to be rewiring a house which unless you're buying a mansion wouldn't go into 5 figures, the low thousands. A new kitchen would be nice but again this doesn't seem to warrant 15% of the cost.

Unless the agent is totally useless you shouldn't have been able to view the property without the agent knowing your position and if you had a mortgage in place. Since you were so quick to say you're a cash buyer than you would have already mentioned this to the agent when you made your offer, so yes, they would know.

As ftb we once offered full asking on a house. A week later they come back saying they want a higher offer.

Some vendors are batshit!

15% of 500k is 75k so yes if you offered me 425k for a 500k house I would tell you to do one, yes it's business but the value not the % matter here. For a 75k reduction it would have to need a total overhaul not what you are describing.

Ironically some posters have clearly been offended by their low offer being rejected. People have talked with glee about vendors not being able to sell their property - why would you care?