Offering on a refurbished house

[jazzmin]

We want to offer on a house which has been refurbished by a local company. It has been on the market 3 months and hasn't been reduced yet from £350k. The EA let slip it hasn't had any offers so far.

My husband thinks refurbished houses are over priced and is worried we will offer too much for it ( it was purchased for 165! Though could have been a complete wreck) nothing similar on the road to compare it to.

My question is, is offering to a company an advantage or disadvantage? We took a big loss , £30k, on the house we are selling so would like to offer 320 max on this. Has anyone been in a similar position? They are a small company, I guess it depends how quickly their turnover is...?

This property lark hurts my brain!

I'm not sure you'll get a 30k reduction to be honest.

I think the most will be 5 possibly 10.

That said, there is no harm in asking.Just be prepared to up your offer.

I think it depends on lots of things. The house next door to us was bought by a developer - it had been a rental for a long time and quite old fashioned. They stripped it back completely, changed the position of the bathroom, put an extension on the back, did absolutely everything to quite a high spec then put it on the market. And just waited. I think it took about 6 months to sell, and they didn't reduce the price at all. Went for full asking price.

So, depends whether they think its a decent price (irrespective of what you want to offer), whether they need the capital out of it, what the market is doing, how sought after that particular type of house is.

I also don't believe in kind of passing a deduction down a chain - each property's value is independent - different vendors, different property, different purchasers. I can understand why you want to pass on your loss, but unless you can back up an offer at £320k with good reasons why its only worth £320k and not £350k (rather than just saying you want to save £30k) it'd be surprised whether it would be entertained.

Great points, there are too many variables going on. A similar refurb a few streets down reduced by £10k after a couple of weeks, I was hoping this one would follow suit!

All you can do is make an offer and see what happens.
I would offer low and come up if it's rejected. Offer less than you are willing to pay and then offer best and final, see what they say.
Sometimes a cheeky offer gets it.

£165k to £350k is one hell of an ''uplift'' in value and I doubt the developer has spent even half that on refurb costs, unless they've doubled the size of the house as part of the work.

£30K off is less than 10% so a perfectly reasonable offer and the developer will still be making a decent profit on that, it just depends how greedy for profit and how desperate to sell it they are.

'Greedy for profit?' You know that's how people making a living?! If the developer didn't make a profit they'd be no business. If the house hadn't been refurbished then it might still be a house not fit for habitation.

The house will find its own level. The market at the moment is slow. If you think it's overpriced offer low and expect to walk away. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

SleepFree - I shouldn't really need to explain this to you but there is a difference between ''making a living'' and attempting to make an obscene profit.

Of course I expect any developer to make some profit, but in this particular case none of us have enough info to make a judgement.

Of course developers can be greedy for profit.
In my town there's a house they bought for 300k, they've spilt it in 2, plus taken most the garden to build a bungalow. They originally had the houses up for 285 and 290, plus 5k each for car parking space, up to 2 for each property
Now 6 months later they're up for 250 and 255 parking included.

I also think refurbed houses can be vastly over priced. We saw a couple when we were buying Our current home about three years ago and were astounded at what they were trying to charge.

One of them had taken the door off the airing cupboard, and called it an office. Conversation with the agent went like this.

And here is the office
That's the airing cupboard
No it's the office
It's the airing cupboard without the door.
It's now the office
It's really not, it's the airing cupboard, whys it got no door?
Because it's the office.

Husband , in complete seriousness, mimics sitting down in it facing out and says " well I think you could possibly sit in it on a little chair with your computer on your lap"

However people pay these prices. It depends how long they can wait for their money. Offer well below and prepare to come up.

Offer what you can afford, the worst they can say is no.

Look carefully. We almost bought a newly done up house because I couldn't face the hassle. (A couple who were serial doer-uppers not a company).

While the kitchen, bathroom and garden were lovely there were structural issues that hadn't been addressed.

So the roof would have needed doing as it was sagging, but was hard to see from the front. That would have been v expensive to fix.

More useful points, thanks all. I did wonder about how I would know the standard of the work, will research the company carefully.

I feel sad the one we are looking at doesn't have an airing cupboard study though...!

Scared- I know of identical situation, 2 houses made from one and the back of the garden fenced off for a bungalow to be built. The minutes of the parish council meeting actually stated the developers were motivated by greed trying to cram another bungalow in. I was surprised they minuted such a comment. It still hasn't received planning permission, looks an overgrown eyesore.

Greedy for profit is just a negative way of describing something. Businesses exist to make as much profit as possible.

Yes it's annoying to plebs like myself when me and DP rocked up to a view a house a few years back. We looked at google maps, it was showing as a detached house on a nice big corner plot. Marvellous we think. We drive there to go and look and couldn't figure out why everything looked so different. Where's the house? Oh yes, what the estate agent had been clever to disguise was the house that had been built centimetres to the right of the original house when the vendor decided to sell off half the garden. I have to admit I was furious but if we had been in the same situation to make more money by flogging land, we'd have probably done exactly the same.

So it's really up to you OP. If you don't want to line the developers pockets and think they're being greedy then don't go there. If however it's the sort of house you were looking for, in your price range and now in excellent decorative order then they have done the grunt work for you. We are currently trying to do up our 'doer upper' abs my god good tradesmen are difficult impossible to find.

Greedy for profit
Every single company (inked a not for profit organisation or charity) has the express purpose as per company law of maximising value for shareholders. Or being 'greedy for profit'.

You don't like profit making enterprises.... move to Venezuela.

I'm all for businesses making money, but when they're greedy about their profits and try to rip off first time buyers who don't have a lot of choice in the first place it annoys me.
Trying to charge 10k for 2 parking spaces, semi rural, miles from a train station and anything else for that matter... that's just plain greed.

The house opposite us was bought for 345 last September. They put it on in June for 475!!! They had put in new kitchen and bathroom and a woodburner and decorated.

They reduced it to 425 last week!

We've made 100k on our house in 4 years and potentially more once we've finished work on it. We were just very lucky to buy it at a good price and the area has gone up due to proximity to Cambridge. Sometimes it's just luck not greed.