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?

I furnished a four bed house last year for 3500. Admittedly, some of it is cheap and cheerful but you could furnish your place with good quality stuff for under 10,000 easily.

Sounds like they're just trying to get rid of the furniture without having to do it themselves.

Sounds like they're not taking anything with them at all, so they are expecting you to stump up £20k for their tat so they can buy all new stuff for their new house. No, just no.

I think if you loved all the furniture and it was exactly to your taste, and great quality, it might be a good buy.

But not if it isn’t all of those things.

I’ve recently tried to give away furniture and furnishings on our local Facebook giveaway group. I’ve been surprised at how little interest there’s been in them - fantastic condition spring sofa bed, laura Ashley sofa, M&S small leather sofa, massive wool rug. I could barely give them away for free. The market for second hand furniture items from well known stores is very small indeed.

Chancers

My brother furnished a 2 bed for £0 off Facebook. It looks alright and he was skint. He left a DV situation with nothing. He could have got some nice gear for £20 a pieces.

Do you know this is what they've actually said to the agent?

The reason I ask is that I was chatting to an estate agent yesterday (not about my property so he was probably more open), he was saying that he really should charge commission on furniture sales as he would make a fortune on the added extras. I'd never heard of this before and I relayed the story at work.

I'm willing to bet this is what's happening here unless you know this not to be the case. The agent is pushing it as they want a slice.

@ANiceCupOfCoffee

If the OP is considering buying their second hand stuff, then their budget is not likely to be John Lewis etc 🤷‍♀️

As you’ll have seen if you read the thread, I have a really generous budget. I just wanted to offer to buy the furniture so I wouldn’t have to be in a rush to order new stuff before I’m 100% settled on what I want, and a lot of furniture shops are delayed with stock currently so we may be waiting for four months or more from ordering.

20k is is a lot of money it is second hand you don’t know about wear and tear of the items and plus as soon you move in you would want to put your own furniture and style into your new home.

Oh, so they want to off load all there old tut then? Unless the furniture is top notch designed stuff then it they’re taking the piss. Instinct tells me it’s not. The estate agent must have amazing skills at not laughing whilst discussing this with you. I would have cracked by now and conceded the sellers are crackers

You get these sort of people everywhere.

They sell 2nd hand for new or nearly new prices.

Laughable. People give that sort of shit away.

@Cocolapew

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

Once I have the keys in my hand, I’ll be back with an update of the list of thing the EA has called me about to let me know I’ve “disappointed” the vendors.

They’re exceptionally sensitive.

Thankfully, they’re moving because the husband’s job has relocated 300 miles away so I’ll never have to see them and disappoint them in real life.
I hope.

@LKnope the “disappointed” routine is very indicative. From my experience is an attempt to brow beat and shame people into doing what they want. Ignore

@Nightbear

YANBU to say £20,000 is too much but, equally, they not necessarily being unreasonable to ask for £20k.

You asked the question about furniture - ’I asked if they’d be interested in maybe selling some furniture’ - they gave you a price for what they were willing to leave. They might be taking the piss but it’s equally possible that the furniture is worth that second hand or that they wrongly believe it’s worth that second hand. It’s also possible that they’re looking at it from a ‘what we’d have to spend to replace it’ point of view. Selling you the stuff so you don’t have the inconvenience of waiting weeks for beds and sofas to be delivered leaves them without. They were presumably going to be using at least one of the beds, the sofa and chairs, the washing machine, the wardrobes, the tv etc.

It’s worth that second hand if they paid 100K for it. I doubt they did

Haven't RTFT but just to day even if you buy everything new and it ends up costing more than £20k, as its new you'll usually get a warranty/guarantee with it. Which you won't with these second hand items.

I could furnish your house with stuff for half the price, easy.

A lot of secondhand furniture is better than new, for the same price, because it's better made, with better quality materials - you can afford a better quality when you buy secondhand, if you choose carefully. But theirs is their taste, and even when you are buying secondhand, you want your own taste reflected.

They just want to offload their stuff with no effort or cost, and pocket a big chunk of cash. They can fuck off.

This genuinely made me howl

I would forward this thread to the estate agents...

Are they an older generation?

No. From what I can gather, they’re about the same age as me and DH (early-mid 40s).

I helped furnish a home for a woman and 3 children from a refuge. We had to pay for delivery costs but the items themselves came to under £2000. We got new mattresses for the bed (the second hand shop insisted we couldn't buy the frames without the grubby mattresses included with them so we had to pay the council to dispose of them too), the TV was ancient and the washing machine didn't last very long. We were amazed at how well we did and the good quality of the items. Some items all came from one shop so we paid a set price for the delivery.

Another client went to the hire-purchase shop and is still paying off the weekly installments. She was terrified of bed bugs.

My parents once paid well over the asking price for a place in a very sought after area.

The vendors then took the living room carpet when they wouldn't pay an extortionate price on top for it. It was nothing special but a massive inconvenience and really spiteful.

If they think it's worth 20k then they should try selling it themselves, I think they would soon find out how much second hand furniture is worth.
And you'd be saving them the bother of having to advertise it, arrange collections, wait in for people/time wasters....or find out it's not popular and have to pay for house clearance or take it to the tip!

A quick shop on M&S came to just over 16K for the the furniture, less the Ikea stuff and the television.

£20k is crazy for second hand furniture unless it is serious quality, mattresses for instance can cost a fortune but who wants a second hand one? Sofas cost whatever you are willing to pay new but second hand £100, £200 tops

If they offered it for £2k I would say fair enough for the convenience but even then steep.

For £20k you can refurbish from John Lewis!

a nice king size bed with headboard new would be around 2.5k

Bloody hell, where do you shop? MoreMoneyThanSense.com?