Buying a house privately

[heyhop]

Hello!

We're thinking of buying a house privately.
What do we need to think about?

We approached the owners and they're happy for us to start negotiating with them. How do we negotiate in the smoothest way? Has anyone done this before?

The owners want to avoid paying an estate agent but is there a way of using an agent/solicitor (if we as buyers pay that person) to negotiate for us?

Anything else to bare in mind when buying privately?

Many thanks!

@LittleOverwhelmed

We have both sold privately (to our then neighbours - news houses, they wanted to knock through) and bought privately (found a road that we loved and did a letter box drop).

In our experience. seller gets three EA valuations, shares them with the buyer, says how much they want and the buyer will negotiate and state what they want included. Seller can then try to negotiate on that. Hopefully a come to some agreement.

Our’s were both very amicable. But both were lead in price by the seller. May not always be the case. Our benefit (as buyers) was that we got an amazing house, in a very desirable area, without fighting other buyers... The sellers saved about £18k in fees.

If you are straightforward and are not going to play games, then it is a good way to go: of you have a motivated buyer and seller, an EA doesn’t add anything and can even muddle communication...

@LittleOverwhelmed, thanks - this is really useful advice, feel very positive now! Thanks for sharing! (We're very straight, no game playing, so I hope this process might suit us if the vendors turn out to be the same!)

@absolutelyknackeredcow

Good luck

@absolutelyknackeredcow, thank you!

@heyhop

Hello!

We're thinking of buying a house privately.
What do we need to think about?

We approached the owners and they're happy for us to start negotiating with them. How do we negotiate in the smoothest way? Has anyone done this before?

The owners want to avoid paying an estate agent but is there a way of using an agent/solicitor (if we as buyers pay that person) to negotiate for us?

Anything else to bare in mind when buying privately?

Many thanks!

Ps, could anyone recommend any Facebook groups to do with buying a house privately?

Thanks again!

I've bought privately twice. The crunchy point comes when the survey comes back with issues. Handling this to arrive at a fair outcome, without loss of rapport, is the key challenge - much easier when you have an intermediary figure.

@MrsLorensen

I've bought privately twice. The crunchy point comes when the survey comes back with issues. Handling this to arrive at a fair outcome, without loss of rapport, is the key challenge - much easier when you have an intermediary figure.

@MrsLorensen! Thanks, this is exactly what I'm worrying about, it's a delicate moment you want to get right!

OP - any scope to discuss this hypothetically in advance, to try and manage expectations (eg. you'd only seek to negotiate in the event something major and unexpected was revealed?)?

@MrsLorensen

OP - any scope to discuss this hypothetically in advance, to try and manage expectations (eg. you'd only seek to negotiate in the event something major and unexpected was revealed?)?

@MrsLorensen, thanks again!