To think I can furnish a house for £20,000?

[LKnope]

We’ve bought a house. It has four bedrooms and two receptions rooms.

The owners are downsizing and moving to a two bedroom cottage so don’t require all the furniture they have in the house.

We’re moving from a two bedroom flat so don’t have an awful lot of furniture to bring with us.

As part of the sale, the estate agent mentioned that they’re downsizing and I asked if they’d be interested in maybe selling some furniture. They do have some nice items and it’d mean that we would be able to move in and not have to think about buying stuff for a while: we wanted to live in the house and figure out how we want to decorate and style it before buying all that much. Plus wait time for new furniture at the moment seems very long.

They came back to say yes, they’d sell us the following:
3 x kingside beds with headboards
1 x single bed with headboard
8 x bedside lockers
2 x chest of drawers
2 x wardrobes
1 x 32” Samsung TV
1 x fabric corner sofa
2 x fabric two-seater sofas
2 x armchairs (fabric)
2 x coffee tables
1 x dining table
6 x dining chairs
1 x hall console table
1 x tv cabinet
2 x IKEA storage sets (in kids’ rooms- we already have the same ones so I know they’re IKEA)
2 x children’s desks with chairs (I think these are IKEA too)
1 x washing machine

All for a non-negotiable price of £20,000.

Now, it’s very objective because we have no idea of where most of the furniture came from and how much it cost new but, at the end of the day, it’s secondhand furniture. It’s perfectly nice but clearly used.

I sent back a nice, I thought, note to the estate agent to say thanks but no thanks and that the price is above what I would expect for secondhand items and it’d make more sense to buy new given the price.

I’ve received a call from the agent now to tell me that the vendors are very upset and went to a lot of trouble to do me a “favour” to even consider letting me buy their furnishings, and they think I’m kidding myself if I think I could buy furniture new for the amount they quoted.

For context, if it matters, I have budget to decorate with new furniture. We just considered this for convenience until we figure out what we want to do in terms of decorating long-term.

For further context, we paid above asking price.

AIBU to think that £20,000 would buy a significant amount of new furniture, and that their response was shitty?

Like you say it really depends on the brand materials age condition etc.

Personally though 20 k for 2nd hand furniture is crazy.

We furnished our entire house for maybe 2k - some mostly second hand stuff over the years, fridge washing machine dryer and cooker only new things and made up the bulk of the 2k.

It's up to you but my advice would be to keep the 20k - you could likely buy all new stuff all good quality for that and choose the styles you want as well really.

Good luck with the move

They're taking the piss.Give me a style brief and a couple of hours and I could find you all that for way less than £20k, AND it'd be new. (I kid, but I'd genuinely love that ha!)

They're probably annoyed cos they thought they weren't going to have to move/dispose of their furniture and now they do, but sod them.

Yanbu at all! They want £20000 for the privilege of not having to get rid of all their shit?

You could easily, easily furnish to your own tastes for less than that.

I mean a quick count in my head based on what I’d pay in IKEA or DFS comes to £12k. Sales make things like beds and sofas a lot cheaper sometimes than what someone paid for them.

It depends what they have though.

Being honest if I only had £2k to furnish it I’d do my best between Facebook marketplace and eBay.

I think their response is that they’re offended. You know from their perspective they’ve maybe spent £4-5k on a sofa suite and it maybe is only worth £300 now but, they’ve spent that money and what they believe it’s worth is different to what someone would pay. A washing machine might well be £400 new but you risk that it breaks tomorrow and you can’t take it back. So, realistically is it worth that now? Absolutely not.

But honestly, I’d leave them to it. Thanks but no thanks. Leave them to try and sell it the day before they move and then they’ll realise what it’s actually worth.

I think I would have just said, we've considered it, thank you, but no thank you - no need to get into the area of suggesting they might be trying to fleece you / their furniture isn't worth it / good enough / not to your taste etc. No matter how nicely you put it, people will take offence.

Plus people are weird about selling houses. Our vendor wrote on the fixture and fittings form THAT WE COULD NOT HAVE HIS SHED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. All in caps. Apparently it was a handed down family shed 🤷‍♀️

Next time, short but sweet, thanks but no thanks

They’re having a laugh, you were totally right to turn down this ‘offer’ they’re crackers if they think they’ll get anywhere near that for that furniture.

The vendors are barking.

It’s quite a lot of furniture and I wouldn’t be surprised that it cost £20,000 new if most of them are decent quality.

I definitely wouldn’t expect to pay that for secondhand furniture though! More like £5,000 if they’re in good condition.

I should add I suppose that if their furniture was very high quality stuff that cost a lot new and designed to last, in good nick, then it's possible that it is a good deal. But how do you know? I'd want receipts for everything - are you getting Ercol beds and expensive mattresses secondhand, or already cheap IKEA stuff secondhand (not that there's anything wrong with IKEA but you know what I mean).

There is no way on earth the stuff is worth that.

And secondhand beds?, no thanks 🚫

It's also saving them time and effort not having to advertise it for sale or move it out. Sofas go for peanuts second hand in fact most of what you listed does.

Hmmm - a nice king size bed with headboard new would be around 2.5k - you have 3 of those there so 7.5k - then a corner sofa and chairs new could easily be 4K - you’re up to 11k on those things alone. I do think you wouldn’t be able to buy all that new for 20k however if you did you would be choosing things you like... I think they were rude to respond that way though.

Well now you know your vendors are arseholes.

It would have to be amazing quality and pristine to be worth anywhere near that much.

There’s probably some sentiment driving their snippiness so I wouldn’t think too badly of them. I wouldn’t pay £20,000 for their furniture either, though! As long as you were polite in your rejection of the offer then their reaction isn’t your fault.

Please don’t!.... tell them thank you but no thank you. Good furniture the house for you on that and get you some change. Plus once your in, the house and furniture grows with you, how you want to use each space. 20k will get you all new stuff, which brightens up the place, plus you’ll have some stuff guaranteed etc. In that price too.

Really can’t stress enough to tell them to jog on. It will probably be more hassle for them to move it, and would get nowhere near that if they sell it, and may leave the odd item anyway.

Its entirely possible they spent 40£k on the furniture and think they're doing you a favour, which doesn't mean its worth it.

Our house was an executor sale, there was a new-ish (less than two years old) washing machine left along with four quite old-fashioned armchairs, some beds, old wardrobes etc. We had asked if they'd leave it, didn't pay any more: basically we knew we'd be getting rid of a lot of it immediately but that some of it would be a useful stopgap till we could replace it. Some of it took us a lot of effort to dismantle/dispose of, but the old-fashioned armchairs we subsequently discovered would cost close to a grand each to buy new. However, in all honestly, we would never have bought them.

Its all about what its worth to you. Personally, I wouldn't spend 20k on someone else's tase.

They are having a laugh! I am an interior designer. If you gave me a design brief I could furnish your home AND accessorise/dress it for way less than £20K!

It's a try-on.Just walk away.

FYI I have bought vendors furniture in the past; here's the prices from 2 unrelated moves

two top quality double beds, spotless, perfect condition £30 and £50

Mixed lot, SS swingbin;' vacuum cleaner. £10

On last move I sold some of our furniture to a friend furnishing holiday home

DFS sofa, £20. Coffee table, £10, TV stand (oak ) £25.

You can buy a hell of a lot for 20k. You might not get every item on that list but what you get will be yours, and to your tastes.

I wouldn’t pay £20k for someone else’s choice.

They’re having a laugh. Nobody would pay that much.

They are having a laugh. I could quite easily furnish a 4 bed house for £5k and that's buying new things.
Of course they are pissed off, they thought they were going to get a holiday off you.

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

They are having a laugh. I could quite easily furnish a 4 bed house for £5k and that's buying new things. Of course they are pissed off, they thought they were going to get a holiday off you.

I actually don't think you could. The cheapest IKEA king sized bed we could find set us back 600£ at the time. We're talking two of them, a tv, a washing machine, and large amount of other things including multiple sofas. Unless you are literally buying the cheapest furniture you can find from anywhere, I don't think you could get all the things on that list new for 5k. It doesn't mean I think she should pay 20, but I think people often underestimate how much it costs to furnish a house from scratch when you're buying everything.

You could buy brand new for less than £20k. CFers