Seriously fed up. Does anyone take offers any more?

[JubileeStreet]

We've been looking for a house for far too long. Made what we think is a reasonable offer on a house today of £400,000. It is on the market for £425,000. It was turned down flat. We can't go any further. This is not the first time this has happened to us over the last year. It has happened four times, all similar prices. It seems that nobody wants to entertain the idea of an offer, even when it is a decent one. We are renting and so have no chain. We have a mortgage agreed in principle and a large deposit from recent house sale.

Do people just pay the asking price these days and should we forget about an offer? Just wondering about other people's experiences!

It's annoying but if people don't get x amount for their house then they can't afford the house they want to buy. Some people aren't in a hurry to move or maybe it's a house they've inherited or sometimes couples in the process of splitting up are very difficult about offers.

Jam - that sounds nice but I can't move to Essex! I can understand your frustrations there. We have steered clear of any houses that say 'offers over' if they are over budget - at least that is clear.

Yes Vivien - one of the houses we couldn't get anywhere with involved a divorcing couple who took 3 days to come back every time we put an offer in (3 times) only to reject it in each case. Husband had gone and she was in a large 5 bed house by herself, but in no hurry to get out!

Why does it have to be so complicated?!

I sympathise. This is the reason we haven't moved. We just can't make the jump to get anything with a bit more space without losing out on garden and nice quiet spot.

Op.
Number 4 was the cheekiest on your list.
You must be so over it.
You have my sympathy !

It is frustrating. We were keen to sell ours and accepted an offer £5k below asking price within 10 days (around 3.5%)

We then offered on a house that was on at £196k but we noted a few issues on our way round. We offered £185k initially raising to £191k. She decided she "couldn't afford to sell so far below asking price", then took it off the market some weeks later.

This house belonged to a couple who were divorcing and had been on the market over 18 months so you'd think they'd have been keen to sell... nope, we only managed to get £4.5k (around 2.5%) off. No regrets but God it's frustrating!

The estate agent did say to me "Don't make the mistake of thinking houses that are on the market for a long time will take an offer. Generally the reason they're still on the market is precisely because they've rejected previous good offers."

We've just bought somewhere for 45k under asking having accepted 40k under asking for ours. That is about an 7-8% reduction. Prices are falling round here (london suburbs). We were fine accepting a lower offer because we put in a low offer, but a lot of people are sticking to what they think their houses SHOULD be worth ie what they were selling for last spring/summer and not what they are now worth. Very little was shifting round here in the past 6 months, and what has sold have all been under asking. So depends where you are!

Why not go back to house 5? It's on the market at a price you can do.

I think you just need to keep looking. The right one will come up. We looked at loads of houses and offered on a few when we moved here. I now look back and think this house was definitely worth the wait.

One thing I did do was save houses (in Rightmove) that were in our price range that we weren't interested in. I then scanned the list every day to see what had sold, been reduced, been withdrawn, etc. As a consequence, I could predict what would sell quickly.

Anything, including houses, are only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If you're in an area where there is not much movement they might accept an offer, but supply and demand in popular areas these days mean that houses are going for asking or above. We bought in July for 35k over, and sold ours for 17k over. We sold our previous house for 5k under as had little interest and wanted to move.
Looks like you might need to Co concentrate on houses less than 400. Could you find one that is cheaper but needs a little work?

I feel for you, but I don’t think there is any set rule. As everyone else has said, it depends on whether it is a buoyant market but every single seller is different. There will of course be the sellers who are just looking for £££, they have a figure in mind for what they want / need (rather than what the market reflects). They’ll hold out for the asking price no matter what. After that you have the sellers who think it is worth £X but put it on for £X + 10% or +20% expecting to be knocked down. Then there are the sellers who are realistic – do their own research about what a house is worth before they listen to EAs, put it on around that price expecting to get it. Plus lots of variations in between. The difficulty comes in that you never know what kind of seller you’re dealing with. So I don’t think a “we’ll knock 10% off the asking price every time” is going to work.

Also, I’m always surprised when people say they knocked something off the asking price when they offered because it didn’t have a garage / utility room / 4th bedroom or whatever. Surely sellers price their properties according to what they have, so knocking something off the asking price just because it doesn’t meet your own criteria seems a bit odd to me. If its worth what the seller is asking without a garage / 4th bedroom etc, why would you knock something off the asking price? I might be missing the point though !

As others have said, I’d still look at houses that are above your budget but perhaps by not so much.

It's not greed or over-pricing though in general. Houses are worth what someone will pay for them.

We put our house on the market with an AP 'range' and achieved the top end in less than a week through a bit of a bidding war. We were shocked.

But, the house we are moving to was on the market for over 6 months and had reduced the price in that time. The vendors hadn't accepted any offers in that time but had had some. We made 3 offers (didn't go above our ceiling) and in the end the EA basically told us that they were being totally unrealistic about what they could achieve and he basically told them to accept our offer as it would never get any better.

I think the problem is that it's such a game, how are we supposed to know what the vendor actually wants or needs in order to accept an offer?

Just another thought but period properties, which you say you're interested in, can be much harder to value especially if they're unique or "different" in some way. Much easier to value a standard 1970s 3-bed semi in a street where identical properties have sold in the past. For this reason I would expect more negotiation over a period property rather than less. I know of one house around here that was on the market for 950 and an offer of 830 was accepted. I would always look at houses up to 10% above my maximum budget (and more if work needs to be done or if its been on the market for a while).

Have you thought of offering to buy in less obvious increments (ie. not in multiples of 5k)? The house we bought 9 years ago was on for 309k, offered 295k was rejected and then offered/purchased for 297k - seller knew we were in a good position but were likely to carry on shopping around for other properties and they wanted to move. Similar thing happened with a friend who could offer asking price, offered -15%, then an odd increment - they were amazed this strategy worked.
Also, be careful not to divulge your precise budget to estate agents - if you disclose too much the estate agent might advise your vendor to hang on.
I think all you are up against is is human nature! The perfect house is just around the corner, just be patient

Agree that it's not always greed that forces sellers to decline lowball offers. Often the offer is just not realistic at all.

A previous sale we had valuations between 395k and 450k. Marketed at 425k. Several views with Buyer 1 telling our EA they had a max budget of 400k.....they offered 360k which we declined, but said we'd accept happily 370k for a quick exchange. They refused to increase their offer.

Next day Buyer 2 offered 385k which we accepted. Simultaneously Buyer 1 came back and increased their offer to 370k, which we would have accepted the previous day. Sale completed to Buyer 2 at 385k.....

Our EA told us Buyer 1 had been viewing houses marketed between 400k and 450k and had offered no more than 370k for any of them, despite their supposed budget of 400k.

See this is the game that annoys me so much. If it wasn't such a game then here is no way that an EA should be showing properties on at £450k to someone who supposedly only has £400k to spend.

Oh thanks for all the support, you lovely ladies! I feel much better today and have an 'onwards and upwards' attitude now (not sure how long that will last!).

Basin (love your username!) - I agree the lack of upfrontness about it all is very annoying.

Babel - I might try the less obvious increments trick next time. Anything is worth a try!

Addtobasket - can't go back to house 5 unfortunately now as there are issues with the local school - have a child due to start school in Sept and have missed application deadline since we put offer in (last Oct) and the school is very oversubscribed so it is a risk now we wouldn't get a place.... never straightforward it seems!

But thanks all - and good luck to anyone else searching at this challenging time!