New build house negotiations

[Southeastmamaof2]

Hi all, so we have extended an offer on a new build off-plan property and whilst the sales lady was very polite, she very politely said that this offer will be rejected by the head office and that I should start thinking about how we can revise the offer. Has anyone negotiation experience with developers? How much back and forth is normal? This is one of the last 5 (and most expensive!) houses on the development and I think their mid-year is in June, so I was hoping the prospect of exchanging contracts by the end of June and will be enticing for them? I did tell her already that there isn’t a lot of wiggle room from our side and this is true- if they are not happy and we can’t afford it then we’ll have to walk away, but I hope we’ll come to an agreement. I would love to know what’s normal. Once they reject, should I expect a counter offer or will they just wait for me to come up with something better?

Op word of advice, find out when their financial year end is. You will have much better bargaining powers then as they are v keen to get the sales in.

I got stamp duty paid, kitchen and carpets laid. They didn’t turf the garden I did that myself via a friend.

At one point they even offered to pay my rent if I moved in on Christmas Eve 😂 leaving my other house empty.

We got stamp duty paid, carpets and turf. No price reduction

Good luck Southeastmamaof2, I hope you get what you’re after or close enough to.

@Southeastmamaof2 exactly, doesn't bode well for snagging if that's their treatment now. It's Redrow.

We also looked at linden homes too who wouldn't accept lower than asking price. The Redrow is just closer to where we want to be.

Although right now we've just been back on Rightmove hoping something else comes along.
Good luck with linden!

Just an update: after declining our first offer, we gave our best and final offer (we asked for 5% in cash incentives off (stamp duty and deposit contribution) and a few extras) we were told that the offer is "still substantially too low" - we kept getting single sentence responses from them throughout the whole sale contact. So unfortunately, we had to walk away.

That’s a shame but I think with houses if it’s meant to be then it will work out.

@SwimBaby I agree!

At the moment I would imagine you would only get a discount if it was a house they were struggling to sell,and I wouldn’t buy one of them as it’s hard enough to re sell a new build

We got 3% off ours as it was the last one, could probably have got a little more. We also had flooring and turf included, plus stamp duty paid.

It think it all depends on how popular the site is. We looked at 3 new build sites, the first wasn’t very popular, and wouldn’t negotiate much off the price (£6k) however offered to pay our legal fees and give us just shy of £20k in incentives. The second would only accept asking prices and not assist with legal fees or deposit, but offered us about £7k in incentives. The 3rd site was selling really well, and only had 3 plots left- they were confident that they could sell the houses without offering any discount, help with fees/deposits or incentives- they flatly refused to even discuss it as there was a lot of interest. We ended up going for a house on the 3rd site, as even without any money off or incentives we could afford it, and it was in a much nicer location to the others, and in close proximity to mine and my partners work. They were also right about not having to offer discounts or incentives- a friend and her husband had an appointment the week after we reserved one house which was cancelled as all the remaining houses had been reserved.

The only time I've know developers negotiate price on new builds is when someone was buying more than one property on the development and paying cash.

I think once they're selling the final fee the agency's are in a good position - they know how many people are interested so can afford to turn down offers. Better to try at the begining of a development when interest is less certain and especially small developers are eager for some guaranteed return in cold hard cash.

We got our best deal by being early, we were the second couple to reserve a house on the development. Even then it was ‘stuff’ we got, not cash off.

@Middleofthenight2 you know that’s interesting with the 3% off. When we originally enquired about the house it was at £769k and we told her then already we will need some help as this is outside of what we can afford. She seemed open to that. A week later the plot we were interested in was raised by 20k (!), so in our next meeting 6 weeks later I said to her that we would now be interested in a different plot as the original plot is way out of our reach. But we basically agreed that I can ‘ignore’ the price hike and that’s exactly what we did. When we negotiated I only acknowledged the original price of 769 ( the other plots with the same house were still 769) but now she says it’s a massive incentive that they would go down by 20k (from 789 to 769) so I can’t expect much else. Hmmmm. And just today after our offers were turned down she actually raised the other price from the other plots to 779. I find that super weird. If they couldn’t sell the houses in the last two months with the current price tag, I don’t know how raising the price will help her. Also, our estate agent offered to call her today and speak with her, and she told her different prices for the extras we asked for than what she told us. It’s almost as if she is making up prices on the go. Super dodgy. I know Linden Homes is a major developer but all of this makes them look dodgy.

So did you offer under 769?

@SwimBaby I offered 769, asked for some extras and 5% cash incentive. There was no communication other than that our offer is ‘substantially too low’.

When we bought our new build home we asked what deal they could offer us and they said either stamp duty, a 1k shower and £5k extras or stamp duty, 1k extra and 5k off the price. She said there wasn’t really any room for negotiation

They’d probably have accepted 769 and maybe included a few extras.

Her job is to negotiate the highest possible price for her employer. It isn't dodgy to increase prices if the market changes or mention a higher price to someone you think can afford it.

A new build house by us has been on the market since Feb, same style as ours but a single instead of a double garage, it went on for £15k more than we paid 6 months ago and they increase it by 5k every month or so, so it's now on for £30k more than we paid not that long ago. I find it really interesting they up the price despite it not selling, although they are advertising lots of incentives with it now.

@user7836 wow!! Your comment is giving me food for thought. To me it just felt dodgy that between first enquiry and now the price went up 20k (and the sales lady now claiming that this has always been the price...🧐) but I suppose you are right. The market is so bonkers right now they can get away with anything. For us for example there is currently absolutely no alternative. We are not desperate to move which is a plus for us, but that’s about it. If house prices continue that way, I suppose we’ll grow old in our current home 😂

Can you afford to up your offer, if you can I’d think less about the overall price and more about how much more a month will it cost to the live in the new house and is it worth that difference?
Sometimes we can get caught up in trying to get a ‘deal’ we can lose sight of the home and lifestyle we could end up with.

@SwimBaby yeah I know it’s not the market where you can try to land the best deal. It’s genuinely what we can and can’t afford. Otherwise I would have probably grid my teeth and do it but I genuinely can’t.
Maybe part of my frustration is that we have a limited budget, but then on top these constant price increases every few weeks just felt wrong. But I suppose someone will pay that for sure.

Seller market at the moment, places our way are going (if they are sensibly priced) in less than a week. Due to a lack of available houses on the market cos everything is selling the prices are going up. Not a good time to be a buyer.

@wombat1a yes absolutely agree. Terrible time to buy :(