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 have faced a similar situation, although on a smaller scale. The owners were emigrating, & offered me the chance to buy a lot of things for what I considered a lot of money.
I called their bluff, & offered about 20% to take it off of their hands & save themselves the cost of disposal.
I won.

I bought all new furniture for a 3 bedroom
house and everything for the kitchen, bath rooms etc... for £12k last year when I left my husband. Most of it from IKEA and some IT including an Apple Mac.

Just no!

That price is a joke. It would be different if the furniture was chosen by you, all highest quality and with the design you want.
Honestly if you keep anything for free you'd be doing them a favour. Selling second hand furniture is not easy and they'd get only a fraction of what they've paid.
My parents just moved to a new house and the previous owner asked if she can leave a set of quality oak furniture. They were fine with that and the previous owner didn't expect any payment. My parents bought her some nice chocolates and flowers because they quite like the furniture.

We've moved to a 4 bed 3 reception, from a 2 bed 2 reception, which had our own furniture.

The furniture we had before cost around 2k, but a lot was second hand or IKEA. We have a budget of the same for extras we need, mostly supplementary bits from IKEA, but the previous owner left a few bits for no extra charge.

Even taking into consideration a good amount of ours is second hand, 20k seems a lot.

Oh, and our king-size bed and mattress was around £300 from Bensons for Beds. Just a basic divan and mattress without headboard, but we were on a tight budget at the time.

It’s all relative - you can definitely furnish a house beautifully for £20k with a bit of inspiration and IKEA/eBay/online finds. But you can also spend £10k+ on one rug or mattress if your budget allows.
You could either make a counter offer closer to what you’d be happy to spend or put together a wish list of big items you want/need to gauge how far off their inventory is. It might make sense to buy a few pieces even if just to save some hassle of delivery/assembly. I’d happily pay to not have to assemble furniture with my husband!

That is far too expensive for second hand stuff, no matter how good the condition, they are having a laugh!

If it's non-negotiable, just say no. It's exorbitant for things you haven't chosen yourself and that someone else has been using.

The estate agent should not be using such emotive language and should just be relaying facts. The vendor phones up crying about how disappointed s/he is the estate agent should handle it. No need for any message back other than ok. The drama around negotiations is not good for busy and just creates bad feeling and possibilities for things going wrong.

Beds could have been £500 from Argos, lots on there for that price, we paid £80 for a replacement king size headboard. They are having a joke, you would be doing them a favour by having a load of second hand furniture, £2000 at the most and that is only if it is half decent

That's a crazy price for second hand furniture and their reaction is even more crazy.

I’ll do it OP for 10 grand and it will look amazing.

So, when you'd finished laughing and told them where to go, I assume you went to your local charity furniture store and bought all of the above for less than £500!

They obviously know they're not actually offering to do you a "favour" because they're pissed off at you for saying no! Now they have to pay someone to take away their of unwanted furniture, or go to the double of trying to flog it piece by piece on Gumtree...

A 32 inch TV will either be cheap anyway or old, TVs are not in the top of range in that size so probably about £200-£300 if newish but it's more likely about 10 years old.

Also would never want someone else’s furniture. No way.

Part of the joy of having your own home is creating your own space with furniture you like. Sofa’s are pricey, everything else isn’t. And you can’t buy taste - your own taste.

They probably are just really tight people with no sense and much entitlement.

My very, very rough calculations are that I could buy all of that secondhand on Facebook Marketplace (and in excellent condition) for about £3500.

They're taking the piss. If they'd said £5k and it was all stuff I liked then I may have agreed purely for the convenience...but no more!

If you are moving from two bedroomed flat then surely
You already have enough beds and mattresses for everyone in your family? When I moved from a flat to a house it was just a matter of waiting and buying bigger sofas, tables etc

I wonder who the 1% are who think it is OK, or maybe they are just being contrary

Second-hand stuff is usually only worth about 40% of the original cost.

So they're saying they paid £50k for it new? Unlikely I'd say.

They are so cheeky! It's going to cost them a couple of grand for removals and storage, plus the hassle of selling. I think £5k for someone's old beds would be a bit much, let alone 20.

I offered the couple moving into our old house our two year old washer dryer for £20. When they sent a message asking to know the exact make model and date or purchase etc i almost felt like telling them where to stick it. As i felt i was being the opposite of greedy. Just shows its all relative. But i smiled sweetly and sent the info. My feelings about it mean nothing
to them.

I previously bought off an elderly couple who were very offended when we offered them £50 for the (hideous) lounge curtains. They apparently cost £2k to have made. So we said a polite no thanks. They were downsizing and we did buy a couple of bits off them. But they also tried to palm a lot of junk off us too. We had to be quite firm.

You don’t even need to fully furnish right away. You can always make due or have thrifted pieces while you search for the perfect items. They are absolutely being crazy. Even if we assume they bought really high end furniture, getting to sell the items they don’t want in bulk is a huge service for them. Instead they will have to sell item by item which they are about to find is a complete and utter nightmare.

That sounds like a lot of money @LKnope . I'm sure it can be done for less than that.

But it depends on the quality of the stuff and whether that's important to you.

I suppose if you were wildly well off and the quality of stuff is ok, it'd be good to do it for the convenience.