House seller wants a minimum of...

[User725465]

Hello,

A house was put on the market 7 days ago for offers in excess of £435,000. We viewed within 2 days and offered £437,000 the same day. It's not the best property but in a good location and we could see potential. Immediately the estate agent came back to us and said they would like £450,000. We left it for the weekend and then didn't hear anything further.

Today we called for an update and the estate agent now said our offer has formally rejected because the seller would like at least £450,000. There was no mention of any other offers on the table, or whether they had rejected offers higher than ours.

AIBU to think it's unlikely the property will go £15,000 over asking if it hasn't already given it's now been a week? We sold our house for £15,000 over asking price in October but there were lots of viewings and people were putting in offers very soon after their viewing and it sold within 3 days of listing after 10 bids in that time.

where I live, property is selling for Atleast 50,000-100,000 over the asking price.

im in Scotland though.

A house is worth what someone is willing to pay.
we have seen houses sell for £100k (south east) over the asking price.

What offer do you think was appropriate?

I'd have assumed they were hoping for around £450,000 at 'offers over' £435,000.

They've confirmed that's what they want.

Offers above as the marketing is annoying just tell me what you want minimum and if it happens to end in a bidding war so be it.

one near us was offers over listed with 4! Agents didn’t even sell for the listed offers above price.

Know of a house for sale 5+ years, it vacant they want X seemed crazy money few years ago but can see them getting it now maybe even more. Waiting to see if it will sell now

You have to judge that based on your local market. And the first offer is really just a way to start a conversation. But £2k clearly is a piss take. I’ve recently gone £15k and £10k over and it quickly emerged the owner was seeking a further £10k on that in both instances. In the first case we were happy to go for that, in the second it would have left us setting the new ceiling for the street and that felt too risky.

We had some estate agent valuations recently. 2 suggested the same thing - either put it on sale for 300k or offers in excess of 290k, which suggests to me offers in excess of means they want a good 10k more really. 15 seems like a big jump

Offers over is stupid. Just pick a price you’re willing to sell for!

I'm guessing they had a lot of interest and decided they could just up the price. The sad thing is buyers will match that price because they want the house.

We've just watched a family home go on the market for £500,000 they had so much interest and people outbid each other it ended up selling for nearly £600,000. All in the space of 4 weeks. 🤷🏻‍♀️. Utter madness.

Seems pretty standard to me tbh. Went to see a very small 3 bed near us tonight - went on the market yesterday. There was 30 people booked in at an open viewing tonight. There’s another 30 booked in on Sunday and a waiting list for cancellations. Property valued at 185k, on the market at ‘offers over 179k’, on speaking to the agent, the seller is happy to take it off the market for £225k

I disagree that 2K over asking is a piss take. We bought a house for more than £10,000 under on an OIEO house (not recently).

It depends on the local market in your price range. If it is still very hot and everything going well in excess of asking price, you would have expected the owners to have achieved more than one offer at >2K over asking by now. I guess they could still achieve it but it becomes less and less likely with every passing day. Perhaps the market is cooling locally as it is in many areas and the madness of 2020/21and offers far in excess of asking price has passed and the sellers are unrealistic. Whatever the case, they have declined your offer so I would carry on looking and see what happens.

It's not much of a game when you have already offered at the top of your budget and you just can't squeeze another penny. I'm in NI where the house prices are increasing quickly but for £450k you would get a 5/6bed detached on a reasonably sized site (about 1/3acre) I don't know how ordinary people can afford to live

I put my house on at £180k, no offers over. And it sold for £15k over.

I think £15k over at £435 is very achievable depending on house and area. If you don't think it's worth it, don't pay it.

Ugh we had this once. House priced at £400k, we made an asking price offer, agent turned it down and said seller is looking for closer to £500k but he could probably persuade them to take £450k. Whaaaaaaat?! I said. Yes said the agent proudly, my strategy is to price low and get lots of people interested and then they bid against each other. He said that the number of people interested is what defines the price in his view so he wanted to get lots of interest.

World is full of morons. That house never did sell 🤣🤷‍♀️

Either you are willing to pay or not.

Last house I bought the vendor was adamant they wanted x price. They sold for less, because no one offered what they wanted.

Our house was offers over; we offered £1k over and got it. But my parents list 6 homes with 5 selling for £20k over and 1 selling for £100k over.

It’s their house, whatever your view or offer is irrelevant. You could offer £450k now and they might say no because you’re not in a good enough position.

Either way, they will be playing a strategy and for £15k, what’s their rush to sell to you? More people will come and they’ll get it.

The issue will be that they found a house they want to buy and until they get a certain number for Theres they can’t offer the number that the next person wants for that house and so we have a stalemate.

If they can’t achieve that number nobody is going to move

This is an investment property that they had let to tenants so in this case they can let it sit for as long as they like, although will be losing money if they have to cover the mortgage in the mean time while it's vacant (unless they bought with cash in 2017).

A week on the market really isn’t that long. They might not have had any other offers, but maybe there are more viewings booked and they don’t want to settle just yet.

Or maybe they told you they want £450k in the hope that you might up your offer and they could meet you halfway. ‘We want £450k’ doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t take a penny less.

Thank you that's helpful, maybe it's worth putting another offer in, it just seemed clear as the wording was "they expect at least £450,000", which just felt a bit bizarre given other sold prices for similar houses (I.e a similar house in December sold for £400,000). I am also biased of my own experience as when we sold our house the offers came in very quickly and we had lots of people bidding which was how the price got driven up. My experience was people who were keen and bidding competitively came to view quickly and put in offers within the hour of the viewing.

I just sold my place for 200k over asking which is typical where I live.

I reckon overing them over asking the same day you saw it made them think they could get more

Yes we've had this on a house we offered on...still on the market almost 8 weeks later.

We're in SE London so it's crazy it's still on the market now- it's a 3 bed semi, the apparent holy grail that is snapped up minutes after going on the market!!