£150K real money - what asking price should we be looking at?

[threefeethighandrising]

Just having a look at what I think we can afford.

If you could afford to actually offer £150K to buy a place, what range of asking prices would you be looking at?

TIA :)

I would say it may well depend on the area you're looking in and how the market is there. In a slow market then you could look at property up to £180-£200k as there might be someone desperate enough to take a low offer. However, for example in my part of London prices still seem to be rising and properties are snapped up quickly at close to asking so you'd probably only look at up to £175k (if there were properties that cheap here - the prices seem to be getting more crazy despite the recession )

Oh, I'm surprised! As high as £200K, really? (gets hopeful!)

I'm not sure if it's a slow market particularly - how would I find out?

It's outside of London, certainly not fast moving, but not stagnant.

Thinking about it, I guess one way of finding out what the market's like is by making cheeky offers and seeing if anyone bites?!

When we came back from Spain we rented and looked for something to buy for cash. Despite this very few people in our chosen area of Wiltshire were prepared to consider much in the way of offers, even if their property had been on the market for a while. EAs advised cheeky offers as cash buyers but anything beyond 5% - 10% wasn't successful. Still worth chatting to agents about how long it takes on average for the type of property in the area you're interested in to sell.

It may be that the type of property/price bracket you are looking at is popular - then you'll probably have less success with a cheeky offer. However, it's always worth a go - they can only say no but don't get your hopes up! Happy house hunting.

fussychica so you're saying we should think of it as about 158,000 - 167,000.

Looks like it varies a lot from place to place.

I wonder how to find out what they go for here. I could ask an estate agent of course, but I just don't trust them!

I might anyway, just for fun, but I'll take their answer with a big pinch of salt!

We paid £150 a year ago for a house on the market at £190 initially & dropped to £170 by the time we saw it. It had been on a while already & they had rejected several offers as too low. Don't know if we came in higher or if they had readjusted their expectations. The house next door had sold for £220 two years before.

We only viewed the house because we had been past & saw the for sale sign, in all our searches we had put our top limit as £140 so it hadn't come up.

Check out mouseprice & zoopla to see past prices.

I think it depends where you are. I think up to £165K to be realistic. It depends if the house is over priced in the first place.

threefeet I'd probably look upto £175k but might not get my hopes up on anything over about £165k but without knowing the market in your area it's hard to say. You can find sold house prices on rightmove too but unless it's less than 18 months ago it probably won't be that relevant to current prices. Agents aren't usually too bad, they'll tell you ceiling prices for say a 3 bed house in a particular road/area or a 2 bed bungalow in your town with caveats about views/ garden sizes etc but it will give you an idea. Look for bargaining tools - new kitchen needed, not quite in the catchment area wanted, you being in a good position - anything you can haggle around to get your dream home.