How long had your house been for sale before you accepted an offer lower than you'd hoped for?

[Honey1975]

We've been on for 7 weeks and had an offer accepted on a house we want to buy. They gave us until the end of March to sell ours but as we haven't they've put it back on the market now.

We reduced our asking price by £15k to £350k after 4 weeks as we'd had no offers and not much interest through rightmove. We really needed 350k to afford the other house.

Have now had an offer for 340 which we rejected and now a final offer for 343. This is the only interested party we have had that have offered in 7 weeks.
We've told the EA we would need to have £7k reduced on the house we want to be able to accept this. He is hopeful as the house we want has been on for a year now.

We have factored in money for improvements in our budget as the property needs a fair bit of work.

I guess I'm thinking should we just accept the 343 even if the EA can't get us 7k off the house we want just so we get the house? We are desperate for more space which this house would give us but I don't want to be stuck never having any money to improve it. It is not unliveable, just hasn't been updated for 20 years! And we'd like to make a few structural changes.

I think £343 on a £350 house is a good offer, that's only a 2% discount. If you've not had any other offers or much interest in 7 weeks I would seriously consider accepting and then looking to negotiate on the house that you want that has been on a year (!! they should definitely be willing to do this!) or look for a new house altogether.

Thank you Mermaid. Two houses almost identical to ours have sold in our road in the last 8 months for £357 & £350 which is also why we didn't really want to go below 350.
However the lack of interest & offers is making me think well this what the current market is saying and we might have to accept less if we don't want to be waiting around.

We accepted less than we wanted after it had been on the market about 3 months last year (Aug to Nov). The market seems to be dropping where we are. If you accept your offer, you should be in a great position to offer again (reduced amount) on the house you want to buy. Up to them if they want to accept it (or be greedy) but if they haven't got any other interest, it's worth what you're willing to pay for it.

Great advice thanks Fraggle

We had an offer on our house at a level we were happy with. Then they lost their buyer. They got another offer, but it was lower than the previous one which meant they couldn't offer as much for ours. We were able to pass that on as the house we wanted to buy had been on the market for two years. Our vendors made us wait a fortnight over Christmas before coming back to us though!

To answer your question, we'd been on.the market just over four weeks when they made the first offer and it was another three weeks or so before they came back.

Thank you wowfudge, good to hear it is possible to negotiate a reduction through the chain.

Actually Honey we think we got a bit of a bargain due to this as we were able to say we were only able to offer x due to the reduced offer on our house - we hadn't offered prior to our buyers getting the second person on the hook. We started off cheekily low and went well below what we would have paid if pushed. Our vendors had had no other offers.

That's great wowfudge.

Having read that Easter can be very busy for house buying, I'm wondering if we should just do nothing for a couple of weeks to see if we get any more interest or offers.

I'm also starting to have doubts about the house we originally offered on as it will need quite a lot of work just to refresh & update it let alone anything more and I just don't know if we could cope with it, me & DH are not natural diyer's!!

I'm going against the grain - if I was the vendor of the house you'd offered on and I'd accepted that offer, unless I was desperate to sell I couldn't give a monkeys that you can't sell your own house for the price you want. It doesn't make my house worth less, and it doesn't matter what you "need" to move.

That's fine, but the payoff is not moving for x amount of time.

Well if they've been on the market for a year, they're not in a hurry

Take your point namechanged.
Think they are very eager to move now though as the man is finding it hard to get upstairs so they want a bungalow. I don't suppose it's their fault they haven't sold in a year. I believe we were their first offer.

Just because other properties sold for more, it doesn't mean that yours is worth the same as those - there may be all sorts of reasons why they sold at a higher price.

IIRC you started at £365k and reduced to OIEO £350k with £345k as your absolute minimum. You also said that after a dozen or so viewings they had dried up and you had only received one offer. Since you've edged them up to £2k off your minimum I'd think very hard about turning it down.

On the other hand, the vendor of the house you want to buy may negotiate a lower price, but they would need to be very keen to take an offer now £7k lower than one made 6 weeks or so ago.

Being on the market a long time isn't always a sign they are desperate.. can be the opposite in fact.

I'm up for sale id like to move but I'm not desperate to move as my reason for moving it's just wanting more space not actually needing it. And well the longer I'm here the more money I'm saving as the mortgage is dirt cheap so it's all the same in the end.