Has anyone ever bought a repossessed house?

[vintagetat]

We have put an offer in on a house we have seen, it has been repossessed and needs quite a bit of work doing. There doesn't appear to be anyone else interested in it, we went to an open house and we were the only ones there.
We are struggling with the negotiation side of it though......we made an offer, it just came back with a "no".
So, we increased our offer, again a "no".
They don't seem to be giving us any kind of indication of the figure that they would like to see which is very frustrating.
Has anyone been through this?

Not sure what the kiss was all about, clearly got a bit too excited!

Either the estate agent or the bank are giving us the run around. Made an offer yesterday which the estate agent thought would be accepted. It hasn't, neither has 5k extra on top.
I don't know how much of is it the bank and how much is the estate agent knowing we are in a desperate situation and thinking he can get more out of us.
I have told him if he doesn't accept the 2.5 on top then we will be staying in our current house and withdrawing it from the market.
Lets see what tomorrow brings....
I am so exhausted by it all.

Sorry, that should have said a further 2.5k on top

What happened OP?

If you're bidding against yourself can your nerves cope with going quiet for a couple of days? Worked for us, we were the only people interested and the vendor (the bank, of course) was holding out for more but when they realised they were about to decline a sale we met in the middle.

Good luck, you do indeed need nerves of steel!

Yes, we are the only ones and I am planning on going quiet for a bit. I am going to line up a few other houses to look at aswell to take all the pressure for this one off. I am hoping that they will see they may be about to lose their only buyer for the sake of what is hopefully a small amount and accept our offer.
It's like bloody dating, don't call them, let them call you. Don't seem too keen :)

I still think you should write a letter to the bank, sent via EA.

You dont know what the EA is saying, it may not be the upbeat message you want, he might be telling them only some of the info, to different people etc put it all in a letter, be professional and look serious.

It can take a bit of time for the offer to get through. They won't necessarily go straight from the agent to the decision-makers. It will go estate agent - possibly via a corporate asset manager - mortgage company - possibly need to be referred for a decision from head office. So it can take a few days, it depends which bank has repossessed it, they all work differently.

I wonder if there is any way of contacting the asset manager directly. The estate agent dealing with it seems very young and inexperienced. I don't really trust him to be passing on the information.

Yes, you need absolute faith in your estate agent when buying a repossession. We had an experienced one who fed back relevant stuff to the seller (ie that we knew the house had been on the market before with a previous agent for 10 grand less so therefore don't take the piss), and was very good at keeping communication lines open.

I also pressured the estate agent to ask what they would accept. It was slightly off the record, but she was able to give us a ball park figure. We made it clear that we were frustrated at being constantly told, "not high enough", without any further info. I handle negotiations as part of my job and I got cross about that.