Nerves pre offering on a house.

[Nellybell]

We are in the horrible limbo stage where we have sold our house, which has just gone under offer and we're going to have a 3rd viewing of a house we like tonight. we're going to make an offer on it tonight but when i phoned today the EA said there was another couple interested who were also going to make an offer but haven't done so yet. What does this mean, is it just the EA trying to make it all seem more urgent than it is. Can I ask the EA if they have already sold? I hate all this competitiveness stuff that EAs do. Hubby would never get into a bidding war and wants to start with an offer 25k under asking price.

Ignore what you've been told by the EA and offer what you think is right. The vendors will accept or reject and you can take it from there. How much is the house on the market for? Ie what % is £25k?

Iggly is right, hold your nerve and stick at what you think is the right offer for you. Don't be rushed and don't be persuaded to go higher than you were intending to.

"the EA said there was another couple interested"

• of course he did!

he's an estate agent - it's his job to push you into making an offer.

bear him no ill will as he's just doing his job, but ignore this dubious information.

Thanks for replies. It is on for 325000 and DH wants to offer 300000. It has been on for 3 months. The EA is nice, I just hate this scary bit of offering on a house. I'm trying to remain cool and objective but the only prob is it is the only house I like on the market in our town that is the right size and price for us.

You have nothing to lose by making a low offer.

If it's been on for 3 months then consider making a very low offer.

Also there is no onward chain.

The agent told us the same thing on 2 houses which we offered on, both times the offers were "higher" than ours. We did not up our offer and yet these houses remain on the market, three weeks later.

Stay cool.

Yeah, the agent has an obligation to try to make you think that there are lots of people very interested in this extremely exciting house which will only be on the market for another 5 seconds so you'd better snap it up now.

I suggest sniffing cynically when the agent says things like that. Works for me. If there were a real offer on the table he'd be saying so.

"There's been quite a bit of interest in this one" or "there's another couple who are quite interested in the house" are the estate agent equivalents of "I'll do my homework later" - it's not provably untrue, and it costs them nothing to say it.

Notfootball, yet still they didn't come back to you and accept your offer?

Never listen to the EA.

We offered on a house a couple of months ago. The house is overpriced (at 25k more than identical properties that have sold in the last 2 years on the same estate - they're new builds so they really are identical in layout, and the decoration is incredibly similar too, all beige carpets and dreadful feature wallpaper). We initially took the piss with a low offer, but then came up to what the identical houses sold for. They rejected it and claimed the house was priced to sell/that they had plenty of other viewings etc, etc.

The EA then decided to tell me a story about how they recently I think we're talking in geological time sold a house where people offered and would have got the house if they'd been willing to come up a bit more. But, as it happened, the house then became wildly popular, a bidding war ensued and the house went for 'significantly over the asking price'. I stifled a laugh and said that was a risk I was willing to take.

The house is, predictably, still on the market and two of the same house style have come on too. They have recently come back with a counter offer of £5k less than asking price and they'd pay half our stamp duty, but it isn't worth that so we've declined.

Yes Nelly ignore the scare-mongering tactics of estate agents.

£25k off £325k asking price is less than a 10% reduction. Rule of thumb (especially in these straitened times) is to start with an offer at least 10% lower than asking. Apparently.

Good luck

Thanks, its reassuring to know it is prob just EA talk. oh well fingers crossed for tonight and as my friends keep saying, what willbe, will be! The lady buying ours has already sorted a builder to come round to ours on Friday with her and she is a cash buyer so raring to go, just puts the pressure on!

You're offering over 90% of asking, which is high (unless in London/a SE hotspot).
I'd certainly ignore the agent's comments. Unfortunately everyone seems to see EA's as a kind of fairly independent middle-man. They're not. They're working for the seller to squeeze the most money they can from a buyer.

RCheshire

they're certainly not independent, but they're also not working - really - entirely in the seller's interest either.

it's in the seller's interest to keep the house on the market for longer and sell for a higher price, whereas it's in the agent's interest to sell it quickly for a somewhat lower price.

there's some stuff on this in Freakonomics (book) IIRC.

anyway, I've had agents hint to me (as a buyer) what level the seller would probably be willing to accept an offer at.

just remember to always be very cynical when dealing with estate agents, and always remember that they are the seller's salesmen not your advisors.

Rcheshire, what sort of offer should you start with? We are in E Yorks, close to York.

The offer on ours was 3k under asking price.

Nellybell what I'd offer would be meaningless really as I'm not after the house :)

I'm not being flippant. I/you could look at the street, look at sold prices over the last 10 years, opine on which way the market's going etc....but the reality is that your offer is mostly going to be more about what you're willing to pay for it & how much you want to live there.

toaster could work both ways it's true (i.e. seller may want to sell within a week whereas agent may be happy to keep it on for a couple of months and get higher commission). But you're right, it's a balance of the seller's objectives and the agent's

RCheshire yeah, I think we agree on that.

Generally, IIUC, the agent will get more commission in total by selling a larger number of properties for lower prices. That's given that they're usually competing with other agents to sell a property, so if they don't sell it then a different agency might, and then they get nothing.

E.g. this paper

papers.nber.org/papers/w13796

"Our central finding is that, when listings are not tied to brokerage services, a seller?s use of a broker reduces the selling price of the typical home by 5.9 to 7.7 percent, which indicates that agency costs exceed the advantages of brokers? knowledge and expertise by a wide margin. "

• although with the caveat that that paper is based on the US market, where (IIUC) the buyer, rather than the seller, pays the agent's fees (I'm not sure whether or not this makes a difference to the economics of it).

Nellybell Ask the agent, "what are your comps?" (prices for comparable properties in the area which have sold recently).

Also, Foxtons overvalue every property by 10% to 25% (in our area). It seems to be a matter of policy. So if it's Foxtons then take off a heavy discount.

We had our viewing and plan to offer first thing tomorrow. Other interested couple have sold theirs and are "fine tuning" the offer they have received. They are not local and are moving from south. Just hope there isnt a bidding war or we are withdrawing.

Nelly in answer to your question, we offered 14% and 15% below on these two houses, both in need of some work and yet still overpriced (ie work not taken into considertation when priced).

The first had been on the market for only 3 weeks so I guess they can hold out for a better offer (like the one the agent told us they had actually accepted, my eye!), and the second had been on for over 3 months and had already had a price reduction of £25k twice. It's a family sized home with a very family unfriendly garden and requires extending to the kitchen (even the basic appliances do not fit in it currently).

Nothing heard yet but I'm sure that the agents will come back to us at some point but we have since had an offer accepted on a house.

Well I've done it and made our offer, so nervewracking! I feel quite objective about it now, I really like the house but the garden is the only sticking point for me as I'm used to my enormous garden and this one in the new house is a lot smaller. House moving is so confusing isn't it?

It is nervewracking. I feel your pain! Currently trying to resist upping our offer after it was rejected, in the hope they will come back to us. But it is slightly killing me!

Good luck. Hope you get a positive response and they don't keep you dangling.

Still dangling, not heard back yet. Rhubarb, resist a bit longer, it might be worth it. It's frustrating as the vendor lives down our road and I have seen her this morning out of the window and I have to resist running up to her and saying, "come on give me an answer". Although If I did that I'm sure the answer would be a definite no :)