House on the market for over 6 mths, vendor won't except a 7% drop in price

[Paintpot22]

We're FTB, house has been on since March. We viewed it twice. Started out low and gradually went up.

We knew vendor was after a certain amount (£220000) yesterday we offered £217500. Vendor won't budge from 220. Feeling like walking away TBH. We don't want to pay 220 and ideally I wouldn't have offered more than 215.

Thinking about phoning the agent and saying 217 is our final offer, we'll leave it on the table for a week.

Actually NoMoreRenting unless they were downsizing, you probably did them a favour. They'd no doubt have lost far more money if they'd have sold to you and bought a more expensive property!

Yes they were retiring and downsizing. But I know they wanted to move to another town as their daughter had had a baby and they wanted to be there. That baby would have been at school by the time they eventually sold their house. Yet they wouldn't take a good offer on a house that needed a huge amount of work that they'd already made 600k on!

Have bought and sold many properties over the years, and currently buying a lovely villa in Spain.
Golden rule is: Do NOT set your heart on a property. There will be others.
Twice we missed out on a house because we could not go higher.
Twice we got a better one and thanked our lucky stars
Leave on the table and walk away.
Keep looking right up to the moment you xchg contracts.

The key question is, is it worth 220k to you? If it is and you can afford it then pay it....but by all means let them sweat for a bit to see if they agree to 217k.

If it's not worth 220k walk away.

My best advice is book lots of viewings on houses being sold by the same agent.

My best advice is book lots of viewings on houses being sold by the same agent.
Good advice.
And never let an agent know you are set on a property.
And also look at properties by other agents, and make sure first one knows that. The s/he will be sweating about losing commission and put pressure on the seller.

Yes, that's good advice to view others agents houses as well.

So when you book sme with the same agent tell them you can do any viewings on Saturday as you're already viewing 5 houses.

We offered 220k subject to survey today. And them leaving the built in hot tub

No dice

Eugh you want their built in sex pool?!

So they rejected your asking price offer? Guess they don't really want to sell.

Then they aren't that fussed about selling. They don't have to be. Probably time to look elsewhere.

Id rather the sex pool than a whacking great hole in the decking

Well, if they won't accept asking price, I take back everything I say about why they might be holding out for AP! Clearly they don't want to sell. Divorce????

Walk away. They're playing mind games and it's not worth it - focus on finding another one instead.

Ah decking. Rat flats.

What is the actual asking price? I got the impression it was more than 220k?

Do they know if they take the hot tub they have to make good the hole in the decking? IE, new decking.

I suppose actually they could just remove all the decking.

Asking price is 234000. Do they have to make good the decking?!

Do you know I'm having doubts now. I know if the seller removes something from the house, like shelves. They have to make good the walls, so pollyfilla in the holes and paint touched up.

But maybe there's a get out clause where the garden fixtures and fittings don't count the same as house ones.

Think it would have to be safe - so if a hole to fall in, bad;

When the seller removes stuff from walls they don't have to make good of the walla or fill them in. They removed there big heavy shelves and we moved in to two gaping holes in the wall.

Technically if you don't have an inventory done they can take whatever they want. Some people have turned up to their home with all the doors and door handles gone from inside.the rproperty and lights and plug sockets etc.

You can find information on Google regarding it all :-)

They took the property off the market this morning

This is a lesson learnt. You know in your gut if you are being pressured to over pay and if you don't feel right you should walk away with no regrets.

Some people are nothing more than opportunistic sellers. They are not especially motivated to move but they quite fancy cashing in at the very top of the market. They get greedy and are happy to just leave their house on the market for ages without ever dropping the price according to what viewers are clearly telling them. Eventually if their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow turns out not to be quite as big as they thought, they opt to stay put instead.

This is made worse by estate agents who wildly overinflate their valuations to flatter the prospective vendor and bring new business on board, in th e hope that they can persuade them to drop later. . Some people, given a more realistic valuation may never have opted to go on the market in the first place.

It's possible they were waiting to have another offer confirmed!

Urgh, back to the drawing board then