Making an offer

[Bobblybobbob]

We saw a house on Saturday and want to make an offer, We're first time buyers and have no idea how much we should offer. The house is comfortably within our price range. I'm worried about whether any offer will be too much or not enough. Can we ask the estate agent for advice or will they lie to get us to put in a higher offer? How did you decide what to offer?

So I'm back and still in a panic. How does the Zoopla thing work? I've put it in the address but it gives me information about houses and flats on the other side of the road which aren't the same sort of property, and none of the sales are recent. I'm a small details not a big picture person so I can't make the individual bits of data into any sort of guide for myself. This is honestly the most terrifying thing I've done. I'm definitely never moving again after this!

I look at the house on rightmove, and click on the writing on the right that says properties sold nearby you can view all the sold houses around.

Terrifying?

Yes - terrifying. I have no idea what I'm doing. The prices on right move are £200k lower, so that's no help. I made an offer on a place today based on the advice here and the estate agent laughed in my face. I would willingly pay someone to represent me with the estate agents. Is that a thing?

You made an offer on another house? So 2 offers on different houses in yhe last few days? Seems like you will just go for anything and are not taking your time at lookig properly.
You can google to get info about submitting an offer. You say the agent laughed...well at that point you say "can you give me an indication of what they are likely to accept". Fyi the house i just bought was valued at £270k. I googled it and found they had been trying to sell it on and off for two years. It was now on at offers over £245k. We made a first offer of £230 knowing they had tried to sell for a while and it was empty. Also i knew they would accept 230 but it means you start the bidding lower. We got a "no" so offered £237k then the agent came back and said if we offer 240k they would accept. We were ecstatic obviously. Play the game!

Also remember..there are always other houses. Just take your time!

Thanks for the post. It's comforting to know there's worse to come! I've been looking for ages, I just don't understand how to gauge the prices to know what to offer. what was the difference between your maximum and the asking price? Was it under?

Op can you pm me a link to the house you put an offer in on? And tell me what you offered?

You can also use free websites like ourproperty and mouseprice to see local / previous selling prices, and daftdrop can be helpful to check out price reductions.

I love daftdrop, it is one of the most useful websites I've seen.

@Bobblybobbob You need to take the emotion out of it and treat it like a business transaction. Ignore any agents, they can laugh all they like but it isn't them paying thousands of pounds for a property is it? Be polite with them, but firm. Its not up to them what a house sells for, it is the vendor and legally they have to pass all offers to them.

Don't only look at previous sold prices for the houses you are offering on, look at other sales in the street, and the next street and gauge how much you would be prepared to pay based on that.

I suppose a lot depends on your market. If you've been looking for ages have you gotten a good feel of what things are selling for and how quickly?

12 months ago we offered on a house we loved and confidently went 8k under the 175 asking price, with some negotiating we settled on 170.

12 months of been messed around and lead on by the sellers they once again walked away from a planned purchase on the eve of exchange telling us we'd just have to wait. This caused us to walk away.

As the market now was much more competitive with far fewer house available we knew we couldn't mess around. Most houses sell within a week, with many going in four days or less (unless there's serious issues) as such we went in 183 on a 185 asking price (prices had also increased in that 12 months so we're actually getting less house than the original) even then we had to up to 184 to secure it.

As good as the advice on here is, it all depends on your local market and what you're comfortable with. Ignore agents they have their own agenda. If houses sell quickly you'll need to be competitive anything within 5% of asking to me says competitive offer within 2% says bloody keen!

We've bluntly told agents on some shocking properties that we wouldn't want to offend sellers with an offer at the level we feel the property warrants (20% under asking or more).

But I know some areas (London) etc are a different world from what I know up here in the midlands. Without knowing the house of the area I can't offer much more advice except what's said above. Take a breath, have a plan and above all decide what the property is worth to you.

When we viewed our house 2 years ago we knew we wanted it and it was in our price range so we offered the asking price. Luckily it didn't go to a bidding war as the vendor immediately accepted as he wanted a quick sale. Never regretted it.

Watch location location location on channel 4 or look it up online

We offered the asking price as the first viewers of a house, we thought it was a bit overpriced as it would need some work, but we loved it. The vendor's response was to ask for more and then even more when we upped our offer, we presumed that they must have thought that it was underpriced when they received an asking price offer so quickly. We eventually agreed a price but it fell through anyway. The next property that we found that we liked, again as the first viewers, we thought was underpriced but we offered a token amount under to avoid the same happening again, the vendors refused so we upped to the asking price, which they accepted and we got the house. We weren't first time buyers but hadn't moved for years and in retrospective felt that we were a bit green in offering the asking price so quickly and that was then manipulated by the estate agent. We ended up with a much cheaper and better house in the end though!