Nasty disagreement over house purchase

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We are negotiating a house purchase and found a house we both like. We have been going back and forth with the seller over the past few weeks.

Our last offer was £555k which was rejected but the seller has said they will accept £558k. My husband wants to offer £556k and not a penny more. I think we should offer the full amount but my husband has refused and is adamant he won't offer more than £556k.

Am I being thick, it's £2k more and we get the house? My husband isn't moving and has called me a clown for saying "it's only £2k more."

prices have been amended to avoid outting

Thing with houses..

seller can sell to anyone : they just want the money for their next home. Maybe they need 558k to get the next house because that seller won’t budge.
chance someone else wants this house and will pay just 2k more has to be considered..

buyer (you) wants that house… probably not just any house worth 556K. If you can scrape the 2k together .. i would swallow pride and pay if it got me the house I wanted .., the end of stress - holding a chain together etc. it’s worth it to me.

possibly offer 2k more but ask for living room curtains to be left or something then you have paying more but you get more.. sellers rarely need all their bits in their new house. The agent could ask.. seller throws something in and you pay the price.

He is being ridiculous! If you really want the house, could you pay the extra £2k yourself..?
I would even just get the offer accepted then deal with an irate husband later down the line…!

He called you a clown for expressing a valid point? He sounds lovely.

OP from experience, if the seller is still engaged in the process it would suggest that they haven’t had a better offer, but having said that it also doesn’t sound as though they’re desperate to sell, so I would go with £556k. You’ve disclosed your hand with the number of offers you’ve already made, so I would go with your husbands’ offer but be prepared for the fact that if they’re set on £558k they’ll probably stick it out until they get there because you’ve already shown them how much you want the house. If you want to test the water, you could always walk away when they reject £556k and send feedback via the estate agent that you’re viewing other properties. At that point the ball is back in their court to decide if they’re serious about selling, or whether they want to dick about for the sake of £2k. And it’s not very nice of your DH to call you a clown but that aside, he does have a point. It’s not very sensible to tell the EA that you absolutely love the house, while you’re negotiating the price.

He sounds really nasty. I would walk away from buying a house with him and contact a divorce lawyer. What a twerp!

To be honest it is not sensible to tell the estate agent you absolutely love the house 😁😁

Something else to consider that makes this all even more ridiculous; Stamp duty goes up in April. You'll probably end up paying more than 2k from the increase in that if you don't just stop twatting around and get things going.

You’ve been going up
in 5k Increments of course they are going to keep asking you to go up. I think it depends how easy it would be to find another house and or for them to sell it again. If you’ve been looking for a year and this is the only house you’ve found then it’s worth paying a bit more to secure it.
are they desperate to sell/ how easy would it be for them to sell it to someone else? If they think it will be easy to sell at the asking price then they might hold out. When you are haggling over this amount that’s what it comes down. If you are not sure then offer to split the difference with them

To be fair me and DH would be exactly the same. I have to be told not to look to excited when we go to look at cars or houses or anything where the price isn’t fixed, because unfortunately the system is that if they know you like it, you don’t necessarily get the best price. I also find ‘clown’ towards the endearing end of the scale of insults!
I would look coldly at finances. Can you easily afford the 2k? Because remember it’s not just 2k; if you have a mortgage you’ll be paying interest on that 2k for the next 25 years or whatever. If you can afford it and want it after that then it’s worth further discussion. If not, walk away.
House buying is horrible.

Well he just sounds awful. I’d find somewhere to live on my own TBH.

Really nasty? ‘Clown’? Alright Pollyanna

I’d leave your offer on the table until x date, then focus your energy on finding something else.
It usually depends on the circumstances but if this place is dated is this a death?

We had a similar situation offers wise and went as high as we were willing to. They wanted a small amount more but frankly we’d offered +5k & this was eating into Reno money. We walked away, it sold ages later for less than our top offer. We bought a bigger house round the corner for less. We laugh to each other when we’re on a walk and say what a blessing having our offer rejected was. Our attitude is very much - what’s meant to be will be.

its £2k and if you live there for years and years that’s a pretty immaterial amount! Your husband is letting his ego get in the way tbh.

They’ve already rejected 2 offers I think there in the fear just just get carried away and keep upping and upping your offers
is the difference between your original offer and 556k a substantial one

no one is right or wrong in this scenario you both have different amounts you are prepared to pay

They know you are really interested and love the house, so just want as much as they can get. EA will have relayed this to them too, and of course the EA wants the highest price for themselves too.
So if you love it, accept defeat over the 3k and just pay it. Or if you have hope, hold out on 555k. I wouldn't offer 556 as it's only 1k more.

The main question is what is the house worth to you, taking into account convenience as well as money. I'd offer the extra 2K in this situation.

I agree with this: I have only bought and sold two houses (in the US) and every time there has been some ego sticking point that one of the parties gets hung up on for something that is < 2000 pounds. In each case the two realtors (both parties have realtors here) usually step in and pay for it out if their fee to expedite the sale. Or they negotiate some kind of face saving swap such as this poster suggests (“oh the built in bookshelves will stay!” Etc..etc…

You say the house needs work doing in it. If I were the seller I’d be very wary of accepting a low offer at this point. Something tells me your DH will be back after surveys wanting to reduce the price further.

He’s the clown if he loses the house - not you.

I'd probably pay. But in this instance perhaps suggest that your husband makes a third and final offer but be prepared to lose it. Either way it's not getting off to a good start.

He called me a clown because I had told the EA how much we loved the property at the 2nd viewing.
Unfair of him, as long as you didn't say how much you'd be prepared to pay in front of the EA.

We are negotiating a house purchase and found a house we both like. We have been going back and forth with the seller over the past few weeks.
The stress of this sort of thing can wind people up, it may just be his reaction.

So you've gone (using your anonymised figures) £445k - £550k - £555k and been rejected, and they've now counter-offered £558k. And this is all still offer subject to survey. There are too many unknowns - how much £558k represents as a drop from the asking price, how long it's been on the market, whether the local market is rising/falling or active/stagnant. They've countered, so they haven't had an asking price offer from someone else.

You've raised you offer by £10k, and presumably thought the first offer was fair. Unless £558k represents a big drop from their asking price then I don't think there's anything wrong with your husbands suggestion or your plan of going to £558, or for that matter countering their counter-offer with £552k.

Is this going to be your home for quite some time?
Does he love the house as well?
How 'hot' is the local market? Do you have time on your side?
Sounds like you have upped your initial bid by quite a bit already.
I can see it from both sides, however, I would not want to lose my dream home for £2k. Also no need to call you a 'clown'
In normal negotiations it's very sensible to have a top limit, however, it sounds like your DH has become entrenched and unable to see the bigger picture.

This goes both ways though (not the clown bit), but if this is in England or Wales, the seller could decide right before exchange to ask for more. When OP is £XK deep in legals & surveys.

Probably NA in other countries but the English system is broken.

If it's that important to him to win the extra £2k let him try.

If you absolutely must have this particular house it might be worth the argument, but it will hang over you both forever whoever wins. Not a hill to die on.

How can you know that? You don't even know what part of the country the house is in! There won't just be one house like this nationally. Also, she said she's changed the prices to make it less obvious

Similar situation when we got ours. We messed around too much and then someone else came in and house ended up going to sealed bids.
We got it in the end but should have offered more in the first place and got it off the market.
In the end we put in X bid but also got white goods and random bits of furniture / curtains / chairs etc that would last us (was our first home but sizeable as we were relocating from a shoebox in London).

Never regretted it. House is completely unique and the value has doubled in 5 years.