Are these 'buyers' actually TRYING to insult me? A £1850 raise on initial piffling offer!

[Mikocat]

We have our lovely flat up on the market for £117k, this is a 'realistic' price according to the EA, priced because we want to sell quickly. For example it is lower than another flat in our block which is smaller and not as nice (and has admittedly been on the market for quite a while). We were really hoping for at least £115k.

We had our first viewing on Saturday, only a day after it went on sale and were chuffed to hear that they had made an offer, less chuffed to hear that the offer was for £110k. So we said no, early days etc.

The couple (who are buying the flat for their son to use while at uni - so not short of cash I guess) came to see the flat again yesterday and have rung the EA back with an offer of £111,850 - does that seem like a weird amount to anyone else??

However they are willing to up the offer by £150 to a whopping £112k if we throw in our superking-size bed, our huge leather sofa and the 60s designer table and chairs in the living room (which are worth at least a grand on their own!).

Can I just tell them to bugger off and not make insulting offers to an already-emotional heavily pregnant woman? (the reason for wanting a quick sale)

AIBU to be this upset?

I think the buyers are mental, a pregnant seller with a clear deadline in front of my very eyes, I'd be offering £85k as a cash buyer myself.

ah heswall I wish I had the courage of your direct talking...

I agree with heswall tbh I would probably not offer over 100k

Your being ridiculous. We are buying a house, offered £10k less and got it for £5k less but includes all kiture appliances, all blinds and curtains.

Anything within 10% of the asking price is reasonable.

If it was me I would accept their offer without including the furniture. Maybe split the difference between their first and second offers?

Try to remember it's property you're selling, not your firstborn, or your cat. Their offer is no reflection on you, on what they think of you, on what your flat means to you.

As Hully says, property is worth what someone is willing to pay. There is no objective benchmark. It doesn't matter who much you think they're worth or what they need the flat for either. They don't owe you more than they offered because they're well-off -- this is not a question of equitable redistribution of wealth. It's the housing market.

In how much of a hurry are you?

If you are, just take the money and run!

In 2010 we had our house valued at between 135 and 120. Having seen our neighbours houses languish unsold for over a year in some cases we put it on the market at 117. After 6 weeks we took an offer of 113. We paid 205 for a house that had been on the market for 230 a few months before. Swings and roundabouts.

Unless you have very little equity I'd just take the offer. It isn't easy to sell atm.

If you aren't in a hurry of course you can do what you want but don't expect too much more atm. You could be waiting a long time....

If you were hoping for 115k, you really should have put the flat up for more than 117k, I would have thought? In this economic climate it's pretty much assumed (as a buyer) that you should be able to pick up a "bargain" and only getting 2k off the asking price would feel like you'd not done that well, if you see what I mean?

If you'd put it on for 125k, I bet the same people would have offered you 115k straight off!

Thanks everyone, it's interesting to get some different perspectives. I've never sold a house before so I find it interesting that no matter how you price something it seems like people will expect to get a certain 'magic' percentage off. It sounds like perhaps the estate agents should have put it up for more.

We aren't desperate to move, we'd like to move before the baby is born but nothing would persuade me to take 30k off the price for a quick sale, I'm pregnant - not stupid! :)

But you're only taking £5k off the asking price not £30K??

No, the estate agents shouldn't have done that. That offer within the ballpark shows that they priced it just right. If you got no offers or really low ones at that asking price then you would know it was too high. If you got the offer the day the flat went on the market then you would know it was too low. You can only know in hindsight.

If you wanted to sell quickly (as you said in your OP) and there is another flat in your building that has sat there for a while, and the offer seemingly is not an insult, then they got it right. Going any higher, you might not have had an offer.

When you go to buy somewhere else you will also offer below the asking price, right?

Sounds like they are at the top of their budget and going to their max to get a deal to me. Don't know how you can say £112,000 (virtually) on "£117,000 is insulting or piffling. Did you expect to get the asking price then?

It's a mistake to think you will put things on for x price so that you can accept y with y being what you wanted all along. You run the risk of overpricing your house and no buyer comes near you. This has just happened to friends of ours - except even worse their x price was above the value of houses on their street. They've out it on several thousands above the ceiling price with a hope of getting above the ceiling price and no surprise after several stressful months they are taking it off the market and rethinking their plans. Buyers read the same papers you do. They aren't dim. We put our house on the market right before Northern Rock imploded. We had hoped for about 5 grand below asking and got offered 4 grand less - brilliant. Till the buyers freaked out about the state of the economy and pulled out. Took us 4 months to get another buyer able to proceed - there was somebody else very keen but unable to sell theirs. This buyer offered 7 below but was for cash and able to move quickly. When we had the first offer I'd offered 5 below on the house we wanted. When we got teh second I offered 10 below and was accepted . We could have hung on for more and lost the house we wanted - or lost our good buyer. Take what you can get and bargain hard on your purchase.

I know from the estate agent that they have been viewing properties up to 120k, so it's not the most expensive that they've seen.

As I mentioned earlier, we were hoping for around 115k at least, which the EA told us was reasonable as we had pitched the price realistically.

gin I was referring to earlier posts saying that the buyers were daft not to take advantage of the seller being a pregnant woman and offer £85K!

Have you looked at sold prices in your area? Many agents at the moment are over-valuing to win instructions, so I would not treat what they say as gospel - they may be being honest with you, they may not.

I am telling you now you will have a very very long wait for 115k when you have advertised at 117k - no one only wants 2k off! - I would start at about 108k in that kind of price range. You do have to get past taking it personally and for the sake of a couple of grand selling your place is the priority. I have just bought a property for 250k that was advertised this time last year for 283k - I started the bidding at 240k in about March last year. Finally they saw sense because they wanted to sell and no one was going to pay over the stamp duty threshold. I am sure that the vendors feel a bit hard done by but as others have said it is worth what someone will pay for it. If you wanted 115k you should have started at over 120k - that said it does depend what it values up as. remember ES will tell you whatever you want to hear to get you on their books. Research sold prices not advertised prices. Just to give you an idea, the other properties I have bought - one was advertised for 140k - I got it for 124k and the other advertised at 130k and I got it for 120k - i had no chain which is worth a lot of money in this market. Take their offer for goodness sakes.

Nobody would be taking advantage OP they would be protecting themselves from future losses. As someone else said this is not a personal slight. If you accept £2,000 less than you need to make the numbers work you just knock the £2,000 off the property you purchase it's no big deal honestly. I worry that lots of people seem to think buying a house is like going into tescos they see the price on the details and think that's what it will sell for or what they have to pay to secure the space and other such Phil Spencer bollocks.

I think the offer sounds good, especially for a cash buyer/no chain. However, an extra £150 to include furniture IS cheeky.

I would accept the offer and tell them that the furniture is not available for the £150 they have offered.

I hope you take it. It took us an age to sell our flat. We declined three early low offers and ended up selling well over a year later for much less and in negative equity. :( We, in turn offered less on our purchase. And bought a house needing some work.

My dad bought me a flat for Uni and remortgaged his house to do it as an investment for us both. He's not rich at all. There's a difference between being rich and having a good credit rating IMO. No help at all but just saying....

These buyers are people with no chain on which the transaction will hang. It really is a far better situation for you than you may think. An unencumbered buyer is worth several thousand £s. (Bird in the hand worth two in the bush, etc.) You would be daft not to take that into account.

That offer is fantastic and you should be grabbing it with both hands, kissing their feet and dancing for joy.

Outside of London house prices are falling, falling, falling. Having experience of selling a couple of places over the last two years, any offer within 10% of your asking is excellent news. It isn't unusual for people to be offering 15 or 20% off currently as many buyers expect prices to fall for years to come.

As an anecdote you may find relevant, I sold a flat last year which I'd originally put up for 235k. Week 1 I received an offer for 205k. "Pfff" I went. "No way I'm dropping 30k in week one". I sold to a different buyer one year later for 205k. I'd had a few offers between but none above 190k. To provide further context idendical flats in the same development had sold for 265k and 250k in 2007. We're in a different world where house prices are gradually moving downwards.

Many people are reluctant to buy at all with that backdrop, so the couple making you the offer may well be envisaging that flat being worth £100k by the time their child completes uni.

I don't know where in the world you are, but if you are not in a hurry, and you have a good property in a popular area, which appeals equally to young families/professional couples/investment seekers, it seems to me you have a good asset which you shouldn't sell cheaply. I've held on in the past, when selling, for the asking price (having ascertained carefully if was a reasonable price to ask), and got it. And then refused to be knocked down on the survey. So that would be my strategy. But it depends on whether you see something you want to buy, and you love it. 2012 might be a difficult year to move. Wait till next year...

As someone else has said, houses are only 'worth' what someone will pay for them. Your EA has priced it spot on, the days of getting the asking price are long gone in most areas - maybe the EA should have explained that a bit better. I'd take the offer and keep the furniture.

Also, two banks put up their interest rates last week, that isnt going to help an already wobbly market.