making an offer: have offered 90% of asking price and been rejected

[curryeater]

The house has a "twin" that sold in August 2012 for the same price as our offer, but was in much better decorative condition internally.

I think it was a fair offer as it has been on the market for a while, houses in this area are not moving fast, most come down in price after a few weeks. I am not sure about raising the offer because I think I might be getting too "attached" (in poker terms)

I know I can't make them sell it to me, but do you think there is any point in mentioning the other house, what it went for?

They have moved for work - the agent says they are serious about moving, they are still paying the mortgage, the house is empty and they need to shift it. He gave me a hint as to what I should offer - it's 95%. Considering offering 92.5%. What do you think?

ah they have already moved and clearly didnt need the sale to move so a difficult position.

Offer what you think it is worth and try not to get carried away. As you say you are a good buyer ready to move in.

In terms of offers we have found that cash offers work best - i.e. covering solicitors fees or agents fees or something like that. Depends if you have the cash available rather than sticking it on the mortgage.

Ooh, that sounds like progress.

So, 90% - rejected
95% - apparently wanted

I'd offer ~93% if the house is worth that to you, and if you can afford it. I'd stress all your pluses and all the house's minuses at the same time.

Some people do price their houses at the price they think it should sell at, rather than a hopeful price. We did that, and sold the house immediately (they made an offer, we rejected, and they came back with full asking price). We wouldn't have taken an offer, because we knew we'd priced it fairly.

Bit different if its been on the market a while, of course. Pixie probably has the right idea.

We're in a similar postion. Made a just over 90% offer on a private sale but the vendor seems to want the price of the estate agents valuation says they definitely want to sell but even an increased offer of 95% was refused! We're in a good position as we've accepted an offer which seems to be going ahead. The house is good but needs some work. Think we're going to wait a few days...

I would wait I waited just before xmas and on 23rd got a call accepting our offer even though he was insisting on another 10k for about 3 weeks I just left it. Is it in London or a property spot where things still selling quickly?

Hi all, thanks.
No, property is not moving very fast round here, although as someone said, at the right price some places are going. There is a beautiful house 3 doors down from me that has been on sale since July, it can only be the price that is keeping it on the market as it can't be that no one wants it per se.

I have now offered 92.5% and been rejected again. I am going to do what Noddy says and leave it, I was going to leave it today but they phoned me and stupidly I responded. When they phone me again tomorrow I might just say I am still thinking and leave it till at least after the weekend. If someone else shows interest, the agents will tell me, right? (surely it would be in their interests to do so in case that sparks a bidding war?)

curryeater sit on your hands! DO NOT go higher! They are fools not to accept in a quiet market. We offered 305k on our house which was up at 330k they rejected it, 2 wks later the agent rang back and said the vendors would accept our offer. We however had had seconds thoughts about pushing ourselves financially. A couple of weeks later the agents rang to say they had dropped it to 299k we then offered 295k and it was accepted. Our house was originally up at 379k so way over priced. Hold your nerve you have the upper hand!

The sad reality is that the UK is absolutely chok full of house sellers in denial about their asking price and the true state of the housing market.

Frankly, such people will not move until they are carried out of their homes in their coffins so the best thing you can do for your health and sanity is to simply move on and find someone who needs to sell.

They will find another mystery buyer over the weekend, in order to get you to increase your bid.
Sit tight.

We got our 2nd rejection today too Curry . And worse than that, the EA gave us a hint about what the sellers are hoping to sell the house for (nearly the asking price! Which I know depends on how it has been valued, but we didn't think that it was that realistic).

I think that we might have been over-stretching ourselves a bit anyway, so we're going to relax, save some more £ towards a deposit / fees, and widen our net a bit too.

T'is bloody annoying though.

When we first saw the house we recently bought, we offered the price we wanted to pay and got refused. We then said to the vendors - fair enough, test the market, but we're good buyers and we think it is a good price so if in a couple of months you've not sold for higher come back to us, and if we've not found somewhere, we'll agree the price then.

That's exactly what happened - also second time round we asked to speak directly to the vendors and I basically gave them the Land Registry sold prices for the road for the past couple of years, the costs of all the work we needed to do, and pointed out there was a recession. They were then pretty reasonable.

At the end of the day, it is just the right house you need to find these days, it is the non fantasist seller. You can't blame people for testing the market a bit - but some sellers are just so attached to a magical price that THEY didn't pay of course that they'll sit there for years! It is like their whole self esteem is tied up in how much the house is worth or something!

I don't know if that is worth believing. An estate agent once told me that the average purchase prices are around 93% of the asking prices. And generally agents put £15,000 on top of the actual estimated value or at least it used to be the case.

don't budge. A lot of home owners are completely dillusional about the value of their home. You would be mad to pay more than it is worth as you would just go straight into negative equity.

I found that a lot of it was down to the desperation of the seller. We sold at the pit of the recession in 2009 at 50k less than its initial value, however the house we bought came down by 85k from its initial value. We were desperate to move and the vendors were desperate to sell. I also think that if houses are priced appropriately initially then the vendors won't come down by much, it's the crazy over priced ones that have lingered on the market that have their heads in the clouds.

There's a house which we like on for 699. Going off similar properties & sold values you would expect it to fetch 550-600. They are looking for >650 and it has sat at the current asking price for 18 months. It doesn't help that the agent originally values/listed it at 785, so the vendors no doubt feel they have 'dropped' enough.

I personally think that there is a vicious circle, in that there isn't much on the market, so agents talk up the value of houses to compete for sellers' trade, but then land up with an unsaleably priced house on the books and a seller who doesn't want to face reality.

We've ended up with a second doer upper probate buy in a row, just because even though I could do without the work, at least probate sellers are motivated to sell!

I think I'd feel a lot more sympathy for the sellers I came across if they themselves had bought at the top of the market and were desperately trying to get their money back. But many of these people have made hundreds and hundreds of thousands even if they sell at a more reasonable price.

We offered 5% lower than asking and were refused on one place where it later transpired that the sellers had put it on and off the market about a dozen times without managing to sell, because they basically wanted full asking price. They had probably made 400k on the house even if they sold at a more reasonable price - AND they had four kids and so much hinging on the move in terms of schools etc. But they just were obsessed with the price.

I think the housing market has gone back to the bare, basic truth that houses are worth what someone will pay for them. So any valuation is a bit worthless tbh.

Leave your 92.5% on the table and if they won't take it keep looking. I expect they will come back in a week or so.

Vendors can be absurdly greedy. Never fails to make me chortle when I recall a house that was for sale when I worked (briefly) in an Estate Agents in 2007 - asking price £420,000. House was empty and vendor living abroad. A serious ftb came along and offered £410,000. Vendor rejected, saying he wanted £415,000. Ftb said no. Vendor held tight. House remained on market for another 2 years and eventually sold for £365,000. Served him bloody well right!

you can always leave your offer open and on the table if they have a change of plan - be pleasant about it and see what happens. You have nothing to lose at this stage to leave the offer on the table..

I had an agent hunt us down and ring 3 months later to see if our incredibly realist offer was still open even though it was 50 % less than the asking price

Did you go for it?

It surprises me that so many people make low offers. Where are these places that such low offers are accepted?

Where i live most houses go for or very near to asking price.

My last place that i sold quite recently i got 3% over asking price . The place i first tried to buy sold for 99% and the place i bought was about the same. Quite a few were going for over.

The chain collapsed originally because the owners of the house we were buying couldn't find anywhere to move to. On further digging we found out that this was because they kept making low offers that were rejected again and again and again. They didn't seem to learn. After a 9 months of doing this they lost their buyer.

We live in Sutton Coldfield in the West Mids, we bought our current house for 35k less than it was up at. It had been reduced from 379k and came down gradually to 330k we offered 295k and they rejected it. We left it at that as we knew they were desperate to sell plus we had had to take a much lower offer on ours. A few weeks later they accepted. Houses like ours (large period) usually sell well here as there aren't many of them but this house was shabby and dated and it had put a lot of people off. The good news for us is that our neighbour house sale has just gone through for 355k so we know we had a good deal, but hopefully we will be here for a long time so it's pretty irrelevant!