Is this a cheeky offer??

[suzilywoozily]

House went on the market for £167,000 today. Prior to details being written up the agent arranged 2 viewings (they saw draft particulars and knew the price). The first couple came back for 4 viewings on consecutive days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday which was a PITA, but fair enough as it is a big decision (and I took this to be a positive as at least they seemed keen!) They then made an offer of £143,000. I did expect to start a little on the low side and work up, but I have to say I was a bit surprised at this.

The house hasn't been marketed at all yet and the agent showed me plenty of comparable properties they had sold at £160,000-£170,000, so I don't think the price is massively out. (Although haven't had feedback from the 2nd couple to see what they think yet) Is this a cheeky offer or do you think its a fairly standard starting point?

I think it's a bit cheeky myself. I would certainly turn it down, probably without comment (just refuse the offer - they know darn well it's too low!). If your house had been on the market for some time and not shifted then you might be desperate enough to take such a low offer, but not before it's even been marketed! Good luck.

That would be a cheeky offer if your house had been on the market for 6 months. On a house that has just come on the market it's a bit rude. They run the risk of pissing you off enough that you play hardball if they come back with a sensible offer. I'd turn it down and say that it's way too low.

Cheeky.

I always make a cheeky first offer, but I've never been that cheeky and they must be mad if they think you'll accept it on the first day of marketing.

Just say no. No further comment needed.

In a few weeks/months, you may want to reconsider it, but not yet!

Thanks everyone - that is exactly what I was thinking, but wasn't sure if I was being a bit unreasonable as everyone is always going on about it being 'a buyers market etc..'.
To be honest I don't really see them coming up to a price I would consider from that offer, and I cleaned the house 4 times for them - what a waste!

I was always told that if you weren't embarrassed by your first offer it was too high. Perhaps they read the same thing!

and I cleaned the house 4 times for them

Definitely the most annoying thing about selling a house.

Even more annoying if you clean it and then they don't turn up!

They've gone in at 15% off, probably expecting to negotiate up to somewhere between 8 and 12% off.

Whether this is cheeky or realistic depends of course. No-one here will know. You know best re recent similar sold prices, condition of your house, competition etc.

I've said this before, but on a place I sold 18 months ago, I received an offer straight away which was 25k off an asking of 230k. I rejected as I'd only just put it up for sale....and then accepted the same price from someone else 12 months on!

I'm not saying there's is a decent offer (I haven't a clue about your house/area) but judge any offer with a level head and try not to be offended. Even if their offer is too low, be polite in rejection as they may come back in the future with something acceptable.

ChocChip - yes I have heard that too, perhaps I am just too easily embarased and they have no shame?!

ATruthUniversallyAcknowledged - Haha, I can only imagine how outraged I would be if they didn't turn up - I'm sure it will happen at some point. I guess a few viewings in and my standards will slip and it will be a quick hoover around rather than a manic 4 hour tidy before each viewing!

RCheshire- Compared to what other houses in the area have sold for I think the asking price is about right - although if there was lots of feedback that it was overpriced I would reduce the price. I think I was just looking for people to share in my outrage and make me feel better - which they kindly have!

I have considered that we may end up accepting a low offer later on - just keeping my fingers crossed that this couple are cheeky and not a sign of things to come. I'm trying not to feel offended, but suddenly feel very defensive of my poor house- silly I know!

Why not check on the internet exactly what similar properties have actually SOLD for, not what the estate agent says, or what they marketed them at.

I would def wait a while and see what other offers you may get. In my experience though, agents often overprice things in their greed.

We've just offered 9% lower than the asking price (our 2nd offer - first was a lowball!) on a house we like, and the agent has come back and said that they won't consider less than x, which is just under 5% lower than the asking price. Since it's a big house (smaller market) and has been on the market since August, I think they are being pretty unrealistic. If it was new to market and lots of interest, I would be rethinking my offer, but since we are the only offer they've had, we are waiting for them to blink first!

As someone who works in the industry - investing, improving, relocating, buying and selling - it seems to me that some of you are WAY off in your expectations of a cheeky offer in this market; also that your negotiation skills are never going to net you a sale.

Proof of this is the sellers' support thread on MN. People waiting for an offer two years on but refusing to take their fingers out of their ears to listen to the music.

The market is moving endlessly - the situation today is different to how it was last week and last month and last quarter and last year.Work with the market you have, not the market you want.

There is no such thing as a cheeky offer. Anything within 20% of a house's AP is reasonable and in recent history, 10% off asking (halfway) was the historical norm. In most parts of the country it's still currently running at 8% discount on AP. The crazy market of 2002-07 changed everyone's expectations and led them to think that asking price frenzy was the norm. That market was NOT the norm and asking price offers are becoming rarer and rarer, even in the still very bubbly part of London where I live and work.

NEVER go back to any offer with silence. Always go back with encouraging words, and a number. See if they bite. If they don't raise their offer, remain friendly and polite. If you slam the door in their face they'll never come back but if you leave the doors of communication open they may do.

IME, the best offers - a combination of close to asking and proceedable - come within the first 2-3 weeks that a property is on the market. These people will be registered buyers with verified finances. After that, you'll take your luck with the Rightmove idlers and the property swoopers, and could end up in a long chain (6-9 months even here, at the moment) or taking a lower offer much later down the line.

We offered 10% under on house that was on over £800. It seemed a massive amount and very cheeky to me, but no way could we go to asking price. I had told the agent what my limit was and asked him why he was showing me the house which I then fell in love with.

They rejected that offer, but suggested another figure...a third up from what we were offering and the askign price. No idea if that makes sense! We accepted (and prayed we'd get a mortgage).

I think that the agent had over valued it. The house had not been on the market long....but they had found their dream house and wanted to move. Clearly they weren't chasing every last penny.

Another house we offered asking price....and it was rejected. The house (3 years on) has not sold. They were an extended family, and googling houses in the street, you could see some were at about 900, whereas this was about 670....there was a reason for this, but the family didn't want to accept it!

Agents over-value all the time. Their model depends on "churn"; volumes of transactions, not commission. So as long as they get you signed up and locked in to a nice long contract, they're onto a winner. Bit by bit they'll persuade you to cut down. Eventually - perhaps a year or 18 months down the line - you'll reach a point where you just can't afford to cut any more, but they still won't have secured a sale for you. At that point, they'll lose all interest in you and the market will have lost all interest in your house, because buyers will have you down as a time wasting vendor, not someone who was very badly advised.

Think like a buyer. What has actually sold, and at what price? Go round with your agent and actually look at other houses selling for the same price to see how yours compares. Compare historical floor plans to see how much square footage you're getting for the money.

1605 good post.

We offered 10% lower with some reasons, on a house which had been up for sale for 2yrs, the seller was still going on to us about a previous higher offer he recieved some 12mnths earlier that he refused...

he eventually sold it to us, obviously still kicking himself.

Hi Mollymole, The sold prices the agent showed us were sold, not asking prices and I have verified the few that have gone through land registry (not all as they don't show up for a while after the sale) so I'm hoping that we aren't too far out on price, but I guess only time will tell!

Cq - Yes I totally agree with you about estate agents overpricing, some of the valations we were given were a lot higher than the one we went with, and clearly not achievable in my opinion. Good luck with yours, hope they accept!

1605 - thanks for your thoughts, good to hear from someone with inside knowledge. Personally I don't see the point of playing games and overpricing a house. I'm not a greedy person so I have gone with an asking price that I feel is fair (and not what some agents were suggesting which was £15,000 more) if I was willing to sell my house for 20% less than the asking price then I would have gone in with lower, more reasonable asking price in the first place. I don't disagree with you though, houses can sit around for ages because people are unrealistic and I don't want to fall into that trap, so I will take feedback on board. I went back with a responce that was a lot more polite than I felt so just have to wait and see now!

Agents are also very, very good at underestimating the intelligence of buyers.

A favourite trick is to price likely houses to the top budget of a registered buyer. Say a buyer comes along with a budget of £1m.

A house in a street where houses previously sold £750k will suddenly come on at £1.2m. The agent thinks the buyer will offer £1m and think he's getting a bargain.

No. They buyer has internet, you fool. Just because they have the money doesn't mean they'll spend it. I wish my clients were as "desperate" for a deal as the agents like to claim in their marketing materials.

Suzi You sound very sensible and TBH it is distressing for your house not to be considered by others to be worth as much as you'd hoped.

But you must keep talking. And you must go back with numbers. They are not mind-readers and they're not going to want to overplay their hand. You need to establish the ballpark perimeters if you want a quick sale.

The old advice used to be to cut 5% every month without an offer. It differs across regions and price brackets of course, but take any offer in this market seriously. There just aren't that many buyers about and the only reason prices are being maintained is because many people can't afford to sell and lose their current low SVR. Once the mortgage rates are re-set, there will be many more sellers than buyers.

fedupwithdeployment - Yes that does make sense don't worry! I do think agents over value and I suppose in a way I don't blame them for having a go with a low offer - just never occured to me they would be looking at our house so many times if that was all they wanted to pay (I will know for future at least!)

1605 - Trying to be sensible, but it is hard when you have an emotional attachment to the place - will have to toughen up and not take it personally!

Oh good god the stress of it all - and this is only day 2 of officially being for sale! Would have been lovely to sell to the first viewers but will just have to keep my fingers crossed for more productive offers comming my way!

Oh, and rightly or wrongly I still think they are a bit cheeky!

1605 I LOVE your advice. We are not in 2007 anymore - anyone wanting peak price should have sold then. The market we are looking to buy in is falling 0.5% a month - we're waiting it out in rented after selling our place so that we are able to be proceedable and have a good pick of properties. Somewhere perfect for us came on last month - if it's still on in the new year - we'll go and see it. I would as standard offer 15% below asking as the first offer - in this market anything else smacks of throwing your money away. At present houses are going on average for 9% less than asking in the UK.

And there are plenty of desperate sellers setting new floor prices for their street - look at the experience of some on the sellers thread - some are now finding that new houses are £50k less than theirs.

Don't be offended OP it's just a bad time to be a seller. You should be able to negotiate the same reduction off your new place? In the long run cheap housing is good for everyone.

Hi Wellies,

No offence taken - I asked for opinions so have to take them I guess! But we aren't asking anything like 2007 prices and to be honest I don't really understand the whole thing of offering a standard ammount below asking price. I know everyone wants to feel like thay have gotten a bargin, but if the house is correctly priced at what its worth in the first place then you wouldn't offer the same % under as one that's overpriced. If everyone is going to just offer 15% under rather than use their brain to figure out what the house is worth then I should just add another 15% to my asking price!

I agree with you that cheap housing is good for everyone though, and the prices in comparision to earnings are crazy and do need to come down. Just preferably not whilst I am trying to sell!

Well we have finally sold our home in Spain - we wish it had gone for 20% less than the original asking price - how about 48% less? and the guy still tried to beat us down further. We are now watching the Euro/pound rate like hawks to try and get a good exchange rate.

When we came back to the UK we were struck by how little vendors were prepared to drop their prices, most less than 5%, despite being a cash purchaser. We finally struck a good deal with someone keen to move on but it wasn't easy despite the state of the market.

Sorry I should clarify that I always check with the Land Registry to see how much a seller bought for (and when), and ask them what they have done to the house since and compare it with local house price trends (using LR, Halifax and Nationwide indices). This gives a good understanding of whether they are just being greedy and assuming that prices only ever go up or whether they have genuinely added value. I would usually offer 15% off initially as that is not a bad approximation of the amount that most EAs tend to bump up prices to buy commissions and is a good test of how desperate a seller is. The fact that the average national selling price is 9% less than asking - illustrates that EA valuations do NOT represent correct prices. There are lots of kite flying agents and sellers out there waiting for the greater fool to come along.

Wellies The internet is actually making the gap between asking prices/selling prices come closer, because the information is now all in the public domain.

Though this is only true of houses that actually sell. Most just sit on Rightmove going nowhere.

Superb advice 1605 and anyone trying to sell a property would be well advised to take note. And there is no such thing as a cheeky offer any more than there is a cheeky asking price! Not saying this applies to you Suzily - sounds like you're being reasonable.

I can though understand why agents overvalue (and I know several) - they win the instruction and more often than not eventually manage to talk the vendor down, so end up with a property on their books which they have a chance of selling, which of course they wouldn't have if they'd have given an honest valuation in the first instance. Its just a shame so many vendors fall for it as it wastes everyone's time.

For what its worth, the last place I sold was earlier this year; I took account of what similar properties had sold for (ignoring those languishing on the market), and the condition (needed some updating). I accepted 9% less than asking from a cash buyer...and completed within a month.