selling house - go low or high on asking price

[Melchizedek22]

Estate agent wants to put house up at low-end price with offers in excess of, is this a good idea? In my simple mind, if you want to start a haggle, you start high! Any advice welcome. I'm wondering if the EA just wants to get a quick sale not the highest price.

Hmmm I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. It depends on how desirable your house is though, how confident you are in the valuation, and how fast you want to sell.

Go high! My property was valued between 300 and 315. EA advised if I wanted a quick sale I should price it at offers over 300. I put it on at 315 and it sold at asking price without even hitting the market, a few hours after she’d been here taking pics. It’s a sellers market right now. (This was two weeks ago!)

I think your EA may have a point. My EA valued my flat at 425 and suggested I go for offers in excess of 400.

He argued that if I go for 425 I will probably end up getting 410. He was right. OIEO 400 led to a bidding war and I ended up with 427.

Depends on how the market is doing where you are.

I feel like people want to feel like they've got a deal when they're spending that much money, so I'd say high with a view to accepting lower.

I avoid looking at properties if I can at offers over, as it makes it more stressful for me to try and bid.

It does appear to be a fast market, I would still go high, you might get asking. We have offered just £5k under on a house recently. But that is our max, it will probably go over...

very much depends on the market, but I'd suggest high with space to haggle. Just make sure that you're not massively outside the ceiling price for the area. If the market is very active you could still end up with offers over, but most people look slightly above budget and expect some reduction

OIEO really pisses off. I just think "just tell me how much you bloody want for it" and it puts me off straight away. I also like to feel with any purchase that I've got a bargain so that's never going to happen with an OIEO.

@RavingAnnie

OIEO really pisses off. I just think "just tell me how much you bloody want for it" and it puts me off straight away. I also like to feel with any purchase that I've got a bargain so that's never going to happen with an OIEO.

Agree with this. I’ve been looking to buy for a while and I did offer on a couple of OIEO properties but I offered the price stated, so if it said OEIO 200 I offered 200. One was rejected and the agent said ‘they want 220 really’. Why didn’t they just say that then? I didn’t increase my offer. I’ve now had an offer accepted on a property listed at 235, I offered 205. My strategy was to offer what I thought it was worth (going by the area and similar properties) and if they accepted, great, if they didn’t, I kept looking

It depends on the market in your area, how desirable your house is, and whether there is a shortage of properties like yours.

If you do your research you will know what your house is worth. One EA said that my knowledge of the local market was as good as his

We sold our house for the same figure I thought it was worth coincidentally

I would ask slightly over with room to come down £5-10k

thanks for replies, trouble is there is no similar property, so I am relying on EAs for valuations. I have a second valuation coming and see what they say, maybe get a third one too. I've never sold a house so don't want to short-change myself or price myself out of the market :)

Our house was OIEO 950. We offered 810, paid 815 so it doesn't always work out well for the vendor.

@RavingAnnie

OIEO really pisses off. I just think "just tell me how much you bloody want for it" and it puts me off straight away. I also like to feel with any purchase that I've got a bargain so that's never going to happen with an OIEO.

Agree with this. I’ll pay what I think the home is worth. Last property I brought was under the OIEO price. Be realistic. Also look at rightmove etc and where people’s search limits are likely to be.

As a buyer I ignore the 'OIEO £X' bit and assume it's on at £X. I then haggle down from there. Never been unsuccessful so far, so as a seller I would never do OIEO.

I don't personally feel any obligation to offer more just because a property is listed as OIEO. There's a contrary bit of me that goes 'oh yeah?', and in any case I'd offer based on my own assessment of what the property is worth rather than some sort of vague 'more than this' pricing anyway.

When we sold it went on for oieo - every offer was lower. It did us no favours.
However, if you have a unique and rare house then it may work for you. We live in a city where there were 3 other homes of our type in our estate for sale (and they come up regularly)....

I think this works if you have a committed estate agent who is willing to manage a bidding process for you. Otherwise its just a way for them to be lazy and sell fast, makes v little difference to their commission if you sell for 10% above what you could have - but it makes a big difference to you. I would price at exactly what you want and, see what happens, the market will dictate if you get offers over or under.

OIEO will limit your market. I spent a lot of time reading other property forums when we were selling and a lot of people said they wouldn't even bother viewing a property if that was on the description. It subconsciously makes you think it's too much hassle.

This is predominantly how it's works in Scotland- it's an offers offer price usually priced between £5k to 10k below the valuation (the seller pays for the home report here) and then at the moment offers are being put to up to 20% over the valuation

I ignore it and just assume it's 'in region of'. I've never ever offered more than asking (I've bought and sold about 12 properties in the last few years), though once I have paid more when it came down to best and finals. The thing I'm wary of is rightmove thresholds: setting your price just over one means you lose out potential buyers.