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?

YANBU to decline.

20k is more than enough to furnish a house from new, but you can also spend from 2k to buy one king size bed...so their offer might be a very reasonable price.

If it's only temporary furniture until you buy some decent one, I'd rather get the lot from Ikea for next to nothing.

Why is the agent bothering to phone you to tell you they're upset? Is it supposed to make you change your mind?

The estate agent is being ridiculous. The vendor isn't doing your a favour.

You asked, they gave you a list of stuff and named a ridiculous price. You don't owe them anything and have no obligation to buy their stuff.

Depending on quality, buying all that stuff new would probably set you back quite a sum but you could easily do it for £20,000.

They're taking the piss. It's second hand furniture.

We bought some furniture with our house. We paid $100 for it (in the USA but I assume the process is similar). Basically we saved the seller having to do anything about it and saved ourselves having to buy new stuff immediately.

No way would I pay 20k for someone else’s second hand furniture

We furnished a 5 bed moving from a 2 bed (beautifully IMO) for less than 10K

They are having a laugh

£20k for a load of second hand tat? No thanks. They can sell it. Are you sure they didn’t add an extra zero in the end of it? I wouldn’t want second hand beds and headboards.
Well, they can take it to the dump instead. They’d never make £20k even selling it on eBay.

Unless the furniture is exactly what you want, fairly new and very upmarket, it's not a good deal. If they don't want the furniture, they can sell it before you move in or leave it for you to keep gratis.

You don't need to furnish every room at once anyway. You already have enough stuff to live with for a while. Go room by room and furnish with stuff you love. Much more fun that way.

Reply “It might be good value, but if we are spending a lot of money, we’d like to chose our own. Thank you for the offer though”

You don’t want to piss them off.

£20 000 is probably what it all cost brand new and if not then you could definitely buy all of the new for 20k and it’d still be decent. You’d also be saving them a lot of hassle.

You definitely could buy all of that new and of great quality for £20,000! You’re right in telling them to get lost- they’re probably upset they’re not cashing in on you.
We recently bought loads of furniture- the super king bed with mattress was £1500 from dreams, my oak furniture land bill for tv unit, coffee table, dining table and chairs and a side table set was around £1700 with 2 free mirrors and my corner sofa, snuggle chair and footstool with storage was around £1500 from DFS. You can get huge double chest of drawers from IKEA for around £600 that are great quality and loads of storage units for around the £100 mark.

No way!
If you take a bit of time you can find new or virtually new stuff on ebay and it will tide you over until
You choose the items you really want

They will have trouble getting rid of sofa/mattresses, even charity shops won't take them because of fire regs and hygiene. They are being very cheeky

Paying for extras is a mugs game. If it's good quality furniture it might well have cost more than that new, but second hand furniture is worth very little unless it's all immaculate vintage Ercol.

@namechangemarch21 IKEA currently don't have any king sized bed for sale over £550, and the cheapest is £115.

£20k is ridiculous. I'd offer £5k at most and still not think it was worth it. I could definitely buy new for £5k.

It might be a lot less than they paid for it if it's decent quality but it is at least four times the amount they could recoup from selling it.
You'll be able to pick up second hand stuff to tide you over for now.
If you had an extra 20k I'm assuming you'd be buying a bigger house or putting down a bigger deposit.
You enquired about a few pieces and for mutual convenience. Just stick with that's more than we can afford but thanks for the offer'.
That's totally reasonable

£5,000 is the MAXIMUM I would pay for that lot, second hand, and THAT is being generous.

@LKnope Tell them to jog on!

@Twoforthree

Reply “It might be good value, but if we are spending a lot of money, we’d like to chose our own. Thank you for the offer though”

You don’t want to piss them off.

Good answer. Probably better than my suggestion

They’re sticking the arm in.

There are 39 items on that last. Certainly some that would be nowhere near £500 new so for the whole lot to be worth £20k second hand the bed and washing machines would need to be made of gold and operate themselves.

@LKnope

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.

Actually, I missed this bit. Nah fuck it, I go back to my original suggestion. Tell them to jog on. Cheeky fuckers!

@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.

You really couldn’t. That’s as ridiculous as the £20k for a houseful of second hand furniture.

Oh my goodness I would have laughed!! £20k seriously. I mean ok yes they could have spent a fortune on it new I suppose but still, it's second hand and they must realise that is very expensive.

Particularly as I imagine they want shot of it all and in reality it will be a huge pain to sell. They said non-negotiable, you said no. Job done.

I think for good quality stuff built to last it'd be easy to spend in excess of 20k but they are having a laugh. Secondhand furniture just isn't worth much. Especially sofas. We paid £50 for our vendors Miele washing machine, £1,500 for an original ridiculously long Georgian dining table and 14 recently reupholstered dining chairs, £300 for a 4 piece parker knoll living room suite, conservatory set AND granite kitchen table and chairs, and £150 for a fancy 3 year old Samsung American fridge freezer. Unfortunately second hand they'll be lucky to get much at all!! The owner reckoned if we hadn't bought the sofas they'd have ended up on freecycle or the dump and the auction houses take such a large cut he says he got depressingly little for some really lovely antique pieces (it was his mother's house).

YANBU, and it's silly the EAs are passing on the message as they are. They should be trying to keep the relationship sweet for the sake of the sale.

How old are the beds? Same issues with everything else. What you pay new is certainly not what it is worth years on and even sofas that look good may not be great to sit on. We've just sold two sideboards, dryer, washer, fridge, freezer, 2 x table and 4 chairs, bedroom suite, sofa, 2 x G Plan chairs for £500 and some of that is made in the 60's, so desirable now. It would be a no from me and I think I'd want to know how I live in the house and not have it filled with stuff from the start. You'll have enough to be going on with and personally we have a lot less than others in our home and it suits us and also gives us the ability to buy when we find something we love. Definitely a no and they'll just have to pay removers now. I am also wondering why so quick to sell their furniture, something that raises a red flag with me, as maybe they inherited it / was give it to and saw a chance to get new!

Absolutely outrageous!

Well it's about £500 an item. I doubt very much it's worth that 2nd hand. It all depends exactly what it is really (and whether it's worth it to you).

You could get an loads of fantastic quality items for that at an auction house.