offer rejected, what to offer now?!

[threeleftfeet]

Offered £140,000 on a house which is on the market for £157,500, but the agent indicated (before we offered) that they'd accept £145,000.

£140K has been rejected. Trying to decide what to offer now.

Another couple are interested, and made an offer previously but much less than ours as far as I can gather.

WWYD?

Any advice gratefully received!

Depends if you really want it, offer £145k if you do, and can afford it.

It's a doer-upper. If we offer £145k we'll have very little to make it liveable.

Do really want it!

DP is really not very well today and has taken medication which is making him drowsy, as a result he is being really unhelpful!

He keeps drifting off the subject, most annoying!

How much would it be worth when it's done up?
They are dropping the price by £12.5k which as a % is quite a lot.

Hope your DP gets better soon.

You need to decide what your absolute maximum is (taking into account money you would need to fix up) and offer that, making it clear this will be your final offer. If it's not too far off £145k they may well take it but to play this game you must be sure it is your final offer.

We did similar and it worked but we were fully prepared to walk away had our offer not been accepted. Another factor in our favour was that we were ready to move immediately and could complete the sale quickly (4 weeks from offer accepted to collecting the keys!).

can you do 142,500? worth trying that and explaining about the work that will need doing.

Is the second offer usually expected to be the final offer then?

Not necessarily but saying something is your final offer means the vendor should seriously consider what you are proposing. If it's not too far off what they wanted and they have a definite sale they may well accept (but, as i said before, if they don't accept you'll have to be prepared to walk away).

Our final offer was actually our third offer.

No, you can go backwards and forwards as much as you like, but it gets a bit silly, and it also looks like you've more and will offer more if they don't budge iyswim. I agree with Dawn, work out what the max is and offer that. If you love the house I'd go for it, as you can always stretch out doing the renovations over months/years. There are bits if my house that need doing but I know we won't be able to afford to do them for 5-10 years...

Direct the estate agent to todays royal institute of charter surveyors report out today.

Thanks for the well wishes Karbea :)

And thanks for the advice everyone! it really helps to talk it over :)

We've looked at the offer in terms of what we're willing to do without.

We've put in an offer of £142,000. This means we can afford to replace the hideous bathroom, pull up carpets, sand floorboards and decorate. But will have to wait for a new kitchen, we'll have to put up with really outdated one for a fair while.

It's an executor sale, I get the impression they're keen to sell as they've already dropped the price twice, so fingers crossed!

Thanks for the tip MrsJREwing, I'll look it up.

Stick to your offer. They have only one other couple interested who put an offer in much lower than yours! It's a no brainer. EA is just trying to get a bit more commission for himself.

Bad news (well I think it's good news) re house prices are all over the news today. Tell them your offer is only valid for 3 more days as you have other places that you are interested in.

Ooops I see you've upped your price. You do know the EA is going to come back now and tell you that if you can only raise another 1k it might be yours...

I think he may have done that already!

We're not going to go higher than this now.

Why, MrsJREwing? Firstly, aside from professional interest the EA is unlikely to care because ultimately they don't decide what price the buyers offer or the sellers accept.

Secondly, the report is available here, if anyone is interested. I don't think it'll be a whole lot of use in persuading sellers to discount!

OP - don't worry...he'll come back to you soon and tell you you are in luck.

Don't get excited when he tells you that...let him sweat a bit. Tell him you need to talk about it as there is another property that you have become interested in. If you play your cards right you'll get it for your original asking price. BE COOL.

Spirael, but EAs do advise on whether an offer should be accepted or not - and this can carry a lot of weight with vendors.

Its really all about sentiment (and the media has been full of negative housing market news lately) - vendors may be more likely to accept an offer if they realise that the value of their asset is falling, the longer its on the market. Just as buyers may panic buy when prices are rising (ie not 'missing the boat', the reverse can happen when prices are falling.

We put in an offer on our house that was rejected, we then compromised with the vendor and upped the offer slightly (2.5k away from asking, and 2k more than the original offer) subject to survey.

When the survey came back we then reduced our offer by about 15k to accommodate the work required and said that was our final offer. The EA's came back and send the vendor wasn't happy and was considering another offer - we then asked the EA's for a list of the rental properties on their books as that was our final offer (were relocating). The EA's came back with confirmation of acceptance within 5 mins.