level headed people needed

[addictedisback]

I saw a house I really liked on saturday, its on the market for £150,000.
I know that origionally it was on the market with another agent for £165,000 (although when I spoke to the agent on saturday it was only £160,000, so not sure if there is some sort of agent mind games going on here!) the agent isnt being honest about how long its been on the market for (just realised I can go and check on zoopla!) but is saying there was an offer a few weeks back that was accepted, but fell through due to a change in circumstances, although they wont tell me what that offer is.

I put in an offer this morning of £145,000 expecting it to be rejeceted, the agent has come back and said that they really dont want to negotiate on the price but do want to move very very soon (we can move before christmas) so I went back in with £147,000 as I personally think this is a reasonable offer and more importantly WE CANT AFFORD ANY MORE

I'm expecting them to come back soon and say no, I can scrape another £500 together, but I need you lovely people to tell me to walk away, its just a house and there will be others. If the vendors arent willing to negotiate there is no point.

please help me to walk away and not carry it in my heart and compare it to all the other houses

(more back story, when we first started looking I saw the same style house elsewhere on the estate (new build) and fell in love with it, this house is just even more perfect and lovely. if you ignore the tiny back garden and no bath in the bathroom, which with a 2year old and an under 1 would be a pain in the back side!)

I take it there are no level headed mumsnetters then!

If that is all you can afford, then stick with it. If they want to sell - then your price is reasonable in the current market. If you are able to move quickly then that is in your favour. Leave it to them to get back to you.

No house is perfect - everything is a compromise.

thankyou throckenbolt, and your right, as much as I love it and think its perfect, the bathroom would have to be redone very soon as we need a bath for the children. they have partially converted teh garage into an office but we would need to finish it and put insulation, heating and a propper window and door in. we'd have to buy a fridge freezer as there is no room for our seprate ones and then there is the dryer, we'd have to get a condenser rather than the other type we have (and with a baby and toddler I NEED my dryer!)
And teh decoration isnt exactly perfect either, I'd have to strip wall paper and that is a job I hate doing with a passion!

But it just feels so perfect!

When it comes to talking about scraping together another £500 - you are too close to your limit. You have other costs (solicitors, stamp duty, moving costs, other costs as you have said re fridge etc). And I don't think another £500 will make much difference to the sellers.

Stick with your offer - it is reasonable (very close to the asking price - regardless of what the previous asking price was). It really isn't a sellers market in most places at present.

when I say scrape together, I mean convince dh to use some of our savings!

Its abit complicated but we're using the money from the sale of this house minus any solicitors fees, stamp duty, moving cossts etc. So after all thoes costs we have £147000 left. But we do have savings, but dh (who I should explauin is an accountant and maths wiz) doesnt want to use it. but he's coming round to the idea!

But I agree, if they arent even going to enter into negotiation (at the moment they have just said 'no') its not worth it!

The good news is they are considering £147000, so hopefully they will come back and say yes!

infact just looking at the spread sheet (I think DH loves spread sheets more than he loves me ) we actually have £147600 so I could go higher, but as you said, I doubt ot would make a diffrence to them!

Bottom line - what is it worth to you ? Stick with that. If they don't like it, you can always find somewhere else. It is a buyers market - seller's can't afford to be too choosy.

We are in the process of selling my mum's house (probate sale) for far less than previous offers she rejected. She didn't realise that the market was falling faster than she liked. :(

If the sellers want to sell, they will accept your offer of £3000 below asking price (wish we could have got that).

I would personally stick with 147 (you're right, the extra 500 pounds won't make a difference to them, if they aren't willing to listen to 147!) Your offer is completely reasonable.

I hate tales from EAs about how much the house was originally listed for, or other offers which may or may not exist, etc. What it was previously listed for was obviously too high a price, or it would have sold. All that tells me is the EA inflated the hopes of the seller so that they are expecting more than it's worth. ("Worth" being the same as always- what someone is willing to pay for it)

If that is your budget, then that is what you're able to pay. Especially if you consider that you'll be needing money to do things up once you're in.

How's that for level-headed? :)

£165k is an odd price anyway imo. Generally it should be high enough above the £250k stamp duty limit to make it worth the 3%. Unless they just priced it there to see what would happen.

I do this with houses, fall in love with them, but if it falls through there will be another one to fall in love with soon enough. Luckily I am not so fickle with husbands

If you are a cash buyer and the vendor wants to move before Christmas they would be crazy to turn down your offer. Our house purchase was very simple but still took 12 weeks as we had to arrange a mortgage.

Sorry, I am a knob not concentrating, It is £165k not £265k.

However, my second point still stands

That's great green eggs!

I've just been on zoopla and found out they paid £150000 in 2008 so when prices were doing pretty well. I'm not moving from £147000. I think that is more than a fair offer considering

I wouldn't have budged from 145 if I were you.

Were not really cash buyers. We're porting our morgage across but the people who are buying our home are cash buyer, have a 4 week old and are currently living in a studio appartment so want to be in asap

You'll have to let us know what they say. Good luck :)

If you do increase it at all - which I agree - don't...but then do it by a number that is a bit random - like £467 -so it looks like you have just thrown your last possible savings at it - this really is the end of the line money wise. Say to the EA - "Look, the previous offer was really our top whack - and the only extra we can afford is £467. If they want our utter limit - here is is £147467. That is it".

Sounds weird but may well work as psychologically it looks like a scraping the bottom of the savings barrel IYSWIM. Good luck,

Will keep my fingers crossed for you

Well agent phoned earlier to say financially it wasn't working for them, they hadnt said no, but were still looking at the figures. They could do £148000 just about but that was their bottom line, so I said we would meet half way and could scrape together £500 but that really was it.
The agent seemed quite positive about it all so fx they agree [nervous won't sleep tonight emotocon]

Do you really want to have to redo a bathroom with two small children?

Dorset we will also have an ensuite and a downstairs toilet so it shouldn't be that bad. Plus every other house that we've looked at only have 1 bathroom/toilet and all need redoing as they are disgusting

THEY ACCEPTED!!!!! WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!
(can you tell how excited i am!)

:)

Well done :) I'm really pleased for you!

Just came back to this- congratulations!