House offer

[Cliffordthbigreddog]

Hi,

So, we made an offer on a house for 350 when it was up for 370 guide price. Seller rejected the offer and has said he's actually looking for 390, and asked if we want to increase our offer to 395 as he already has an offer of 390 on the table.

AIBU to think he should have just put the house up for what he wanted? Also, should we go to 395?

Thanks

Depends how much you want the house, if you can actually afford it and if its worth that. I'd probably walk away unless I really loved the house and had no other decent options, he seems to be trying it on.

Only you can decide if you want to offer £45k more than your original offer.

Can you afford it?
Is the house worth that much to you?
What else is on the market?
Is yhe seller trying to create a bidding war to up the amount he sells for (not something I would get involved with)

Depends how much you want the house And what it’s worth

Well no, because it’s a guide price and he already has the high offer.

The best thing you can do is not get emotional about it and don’t get annoyed at the vendor. It’s a transaction - you either want it or you don’t and it’s either worth it or it’s not.

AIBU to think he should have just put the house up for what he wanted?

He's probably thinking you should have bid for the guide price.

I know Scotland they do some weird pricing thing.
How long has it been on the market and is it overpriced.

It depends how much you want the house and whether you believe it would be worth paying above the guide price for it in the long term. I'm sceptical he has an offer for 390 on the table in the current economic climate but perhaps he has.

Why on earth would you put it on for that much lower than what you wanted. All you are going to do is to get a lot of people through the door who will be wasting your time as they can afford the asking price but not what they ultimately want

Why hasn’t he accepted £390k

sounds like he’s bluffing to me. I wouldn’t pay more than asking i.e what it’s on for.

He may have got both offers on the same day. We’re selling at the moment and we had a call from the estate agent to say we’d had an offer at asking price, an offer £10k below, and an offer £15k below. She recommended that she go back to the lower offers and say “they’ve had an asking price offer, would you like to offer any higher” before accepting the higher offer.
They may have thought it was a lie I’ve no idea, but it wasn’t.

I think he's taking the wee-wee & I doubt if they have an offer of £390k. However it's possible that they do as the housing market is rather volatile ATM.

If you expect to get in the region of £390k for a house then you put it on the market at about £400k expecting to get an offer of less than you are asking & then you negotiate a price somewhere in the middle.

However, if it's your dream home and you can afford it, go for it. However be prepared for the seller to be difficult throughout the whole process.

What are similar houses going for? I haven’t come across people listing a house and insisting on considerably more than the asking price.

It depends what the market is like in the area too. Are things moving quickly?

This.

It’s a guide price, not an asking price. They are more common in some areas than others. Our previous home went on as £500k guide price. It went for £540k.

Bullshit does he have an offer of £390k. The market is not that great, if he has put a guide price of £370k he would have got people going in around that mark. (unless you're in Scotland). He would also have snapped anyones hand off who offered £390k. The only place I've tried to buy where everything went over it was quite clear that was happening and estate agents were very upfront about it and the fact he wanted way more would have come as no surprise to you.

People as old as I am (61) will remember that in the early 1980's houses would go for far more than they were on the market for. I remember buying our first flat (in Twickenham) we had an offer accepted for £42,000. Yes, I haven't left any 0's off - 2 bed flat overlooking Twickenham Green for £42k!!! but, to put it into context, my DH & me had a joint income of about £20kpa. Anyway, by the time we came to exchange contracts we ended up paying £50k because the property prices were increasing so fast our seller had received offers of £48 & 49k & we had to top that in order to prevent being gazumped. We sold it 2 years later for about £90k as far as I remember (it was 1983-1985) I so wish we'd kept that flat - it must be worth best part of £1m now. We live & learn. 😪

Only you can answer that question surely? If you think it's worth it, then make an offer

If they've been offered above the asking price, why would they drop down?

It's a marketplace. If I'm selling a house I want as much as I can possibly get for it. Maybe their estate agent massively underestimated the value of the house.