How low an offer without being insulting or should I not care?

[Ruralbliss]

There's two house for sale in our current search area neither of which meet our needs and both more than we want to spend.

I could live in either but won't want to be mortgaged up to the maximum amount for the compromises they'd each be (one is a good 15 mins walk beyond the zone we are aiming for, the other is far smaller than we'd like but very charming, nice garden etc super location) so would like to make chunky offers below asking price and if they are rejected so be it I'll wait for something closer to the price I am comfortable with ticking more of my must haves. Both have been listed since Aug 2021 with no price reductions.

Am feeling terribly British about the prospect of making low offers but having recently been on the receiving end of a would-be buyer making low offer the other week it didn't bother me too much and had I had no further offers might have been grateful for that one low offer than have none at all.

I guess it depends on the sellers drivers for moving and how urgent they are. If they are happy to wait for higher offers they will but if need to get sold then might consider a 20% reduction.

The one I think is more likely to accept a low offer is a nice house on a 1990s edge of town estate with Dual carriageway A-road thundering past the back garden.
Assume if this is putting buyers off now then I would expect to have a hard time selling it myself (plus accepting the risk to life of our cats!)

Any thoughts on low offers or not appreciated

Yes 20%. Then negotiate upwards to 10%.

If they get all huffy about it I'd question how serious they are about selling. Serious sellers will take the offer as a basis for negotiations

Doesn’t matter how low an offer is imo- something is only worth what someone is willing to pay and the worst they can say is no.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Never really I understood why people get huffy about low offers, like it’s some kind of personal insult. They can just say no, surely? What have you got to lose?

Thanks and great.
Now we have Zoopla to check how much they each paid its helpful to know they have seen an increase of £££ in a mere few years by doing not much other than living in the houses.

Forgot 'a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it'. Very true. You can wish it to be a certain price but until someone buys it at that value it's all conceptual.

The house I am selling was on for 3 years a decade ago as they would not drop the price. They eventually took it to auction with the reserve madly set at the same as the asking price. Guess what no one bid above the reserve so it stayed listed on Rightmove. We offered our maximum of £10k under just could not stretch any more which they rejected 😂 6 weeks later when we'd had an offer accepted on another house we liked way less they came back to us saying they would after all accept our offer. We bought it and spent the last decade slowly doing it up.
Even now with all the mod cons it hasn't been easy to sell. Every 20 or so viewings results in a solid asking price offer.
Hence me being strangely grateful for the lower offer the first week it was delisted after last minute gazundering by bad buyers.

Such a long tedious stressful game this UK house selling and buying.

You don’t sound like you would actual want either house. Even if 20% lower, do you get excited about living in one or other? Are you going to see the sale to the end or drop out when something better comes along?
Are these houses right for you at any price?

Do you want to offer less because you think these houses are actually worth less or because they are worth less to you because of your specific criteria?

I don’t know what the market is near you but you’d be laughed out free estate agent for a low ball offer at the moment near me. If they’ve been on the market since August there’s probably not much to lose by offering but be prepared not to be taken seriously.

@NewHouseNewMe good questions and I've been trying to work this out myself.

One is right house wrong location but only by 10-15 mins walk (oh and the A-road which I'll need to assess from the garden)
the other is the opposite - great location and garden and extremely charming cottagey vibe in a pretty village but much smaller than I'd like but I'm being bullied by my teens as they LOVE it. Suspect they'd soon grow tired of sharing a bathroom and having smaller rooms but they insist they wouldn't. No guest room but they point out we don't have guests that often and they could bunk up plus sofa beds etc.

This move is a temporary one so whichever house I end up buying it's for 3 or 5 or 8 years only.

Hence the idea of making low offers I'd only compromise on my must-haves for a smaller mortgage!

Anything listed in August round here at the right price was snapped up within a fortnight. Offer as low as you like (I'm for the cottage the teens like - if they squabble in the future you can tell them it was their choice, and location always trumps house for me).

@clatterclatter thanks but just wonder what would not be taken seriously mean? If I offered £340-350k on a house listed at £415k I'd be deadly serious about buying it if they accepted it.

Take the point about potentially pulling out of something more 'me' came along before exchange but isn't that the upside of our daft property buying laws. My buyers pulled out on the eve of exchange with no legal repercussions. Left me with a £2k legal bill. I'm not happy about it and wouldn't wish to do something so awful to someone else but I'm at liberty to do so if I choose to.

Ethically I don't think I could so might be a better option to let both of these go and wait for other houses to come on the market. But what if they don't.
Would I kick myself for not making offers?

I guess I could wait to see if either are still for sale in 2022 if nothing I like has come on.

how much are they on for and how much are you considering offering?

I’m with your teens . When a house feels right, it generally is. Sharing a bathroom is no big deal and they’ll be gone in a few years.
I find the visiting friends test is useful. Imagine your friends are due in half an hour on foot, will eat in your house, look around and then leave after dark. If your response is “I can’t wait to show them XYZ” then it’s the right house. If your response is “I’m a bit cringe that they’ll see ABC” then question if this is the right one. Your friends in this case are proxy for your real feelings. That said I’m mid renovation so know that while I’m more cringe than love, it won’t be like that forever.

Love that thought exercise @NewHouseNewMe and have just tried it out with both. Get a better feeling about the spacious bling 1990s exec home than the (albeit gorgeous) Victorian cottagey one. Especially as our relocation will mean lots of teens coming to ours post-school it just doesn't accommodate them, me working from home or guests (families arriving to stay one or two nights).
Nice house but not for us so I'll not waste their time by offering on it but might do on the edge of town one if the thundering A-road and extended walk to school aren't show stoppers.

That’s good progress. Maybe offer the teens an electric bike to share for the longer school walk!

So a house that’s been on the market a while with no price reductions.

You can offer what you’d like but offering £340 is nearly a 20% drop. Unless your local housing market is bucking the national trend of being buoyant and fast then your offer would be verging on insulting. As a seller (who hasn’t reduced the price in 3 months) it would likely make me walk away and not consider negotiating- if you’re happy to risk that then it’s worth a try.

You could put in a cheeky offer but I agree with Clatterclatter... do you want to offer less because you think these houses are actually worth less or because they are worth less to you because of your specific criteria? From reading your posts it would seem the latter.

It’s difficult isn’t it - we’re just starting to look and are finding sone houses just say a price, others say guide price and others say OIEO.

We are taking the view that anything that’s sat on the market for a while has done so because it’s on at the wrong price (as everything else is snapped up in a couple of weeks max). Therefore we would make an offer and see what happens! Also assuming Guide Price means just that and it’s a guide!

I think there’s no harm in putting a low offer to the estate agents and saying look, I like it, I’d pay this amount, and if the vendors don’t accept you can say fine, no problem, I’ll leave that offer with you and if they change their mind call me.

We saw a house yesterday that is £50k over budget. The Estate Agent said they would accept £25k less. So still over our budget - we would offer the amount £50k less, and see what happens! Depends how keen people are to sell and also how much they need for their next move I suppose.

I forgot how much I hate moving house

I hear you @Datsandcogs I didn't negotiate with my low offerer and they 'only' offered 8.5% under asking (if my maths are correct) and I was slightly insulted if I'm honest BUT my aborted sale one week before had been with an agreed price of way over asking (5% more) so I had a skewed view of what it was worth and how much some people were prepared to pay and it was more about how urgent I was or wasn't to wait for a good price or get it sold and us moved.

Perhaps I should let that one go too instead of insulting sellers and attempting to buy a house which doesn't truly meet our needs in terms of location. Eldest daughter has just expressed a strong concern re busy bypass over the fence and the risk to cats' lives.

There's a saying in Ireland, ''If your first offer doesn't cause real offence, it was too high''.
Now I know the reality is that you have to operate within the current market but causing offence shouldn't be your concern.

If your genuinely worried about causing offence, you could say ''our budget is xxxx, they're free to reject the offer so we're making it''.

Yes @LaLaFlottes you have totally nailed my thoughts perfectly there. It's all very subjective and putting in an offer might result in a good house at what the sellers consider to be a 'discounted' price but they are under no obligation to accept immediately and could well, like our vendors a decade ago, come back later saying they will accept (as can't bear having to show house to people and unable to move on to their next home until sold).

I think what I've learned also is that a house you love/hate on paper (Rightmove) is never imaginable and seeing in person makes you realise things you would t have considered. I know this is obvious but I'm glad I've learned it.

The house we very nearly moved into but lost due to our sale falling through I went to view thinking I was ruling it out and just viewing as my teens had spotted it and liked it. But there were so many unforeseen good points about it (not overlooked, fabulous amount of windows of differing aspects in each room, double solid oak doors etc) I'm glad I saw it and secured the purchase.

Funny old business isn't it. Won't be doing it again in a hurry. Maybe I should consider this next one as my forever home not my temporary pit stop on that basis!

''Am feeling terribly British about the prospect of making low offers but having recently been on the receiving end of a would-be buyer making low offer the other week it didn't bother me too much and had I had no further offers might have been grateful for that one low offer than have none at all.''

I felt like this but my father couldn't have cared less and he made the offers for me. He didn't care about ''feeeeeeeelings''. He was told no no, ignored, no, no go to hell, no and then miraculously I got this house and the neighbours told me as I was moving in ''you got this for a song''

Wow.

But yeh, got a good price on it.

Offer what you'd pay if you could and they have the freedom to accept, negotiate, ignore you or tell you to sling your hook.

When I was selling I had my house priced just below average for the area and it was newly decorated. I had two offers at 20% below asking price which I thought was insulting. One had three viewings before this offer.
I did want to move but could not afford to at that price, and felt that people who would offer so low would be really difficult to deal with even if they increased the offer.
You cannot expect someone to sell their house at vastly below market rate. I felt people thought as an older woman on my own, I could be bullied.

We're funny about offering low and being turned down. We almost completed on a house about a year ago, but the valuation then came in almost 150k under what was offered. The sellers were exceedingly arsey about us not proceeding at the agreed price and when we offered to pay 100k less (still 50 over the valuation) they told us to bog off. They then put it back on the market, didn't sell for 9 months and then sold at 150k less than ask - exactly what we'd told them the valuation came in at and 50k less than they would have had from us. Fun times.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂@AnFiadhRua its definitely an English not wishing to cause offence attitude stopping me.
Also yes if your first low offer is accepted you're then left thinking 'Darn maybe I could have saved more £££ by offering even less'

I'm sure my dad told me of some tactic he had with estate agents warming them up with the hint of an offer but couldn't possibly make it due to the fear of causing offence to the vendors then basically having the agent beg him to make the offer anyway... I'll ask him.

The time we got this current house at an under asking price we were genuinely at the top of our budget but although we said that and didn't offer more I could have been bluffing.

I guess I could use same tactic. Very much love the house and don't want to offend but our top price offer is £350k & see what happens fully expecting them to tell us to naff off initially and possibly accept later but if they try to increase state it's the absolute max and we'll wait for a cheaper house to come on as in no actual immediate rush.

Hmmmm.

Maybe they’ve been on the market for ages because the seller won’t accept a lower offer? Have you asked the sellers their reason or motive for moving? They might just be happy to let it sit on the market on the off chance they sell at that price. Anyway it’s all hypothetical until you engage with the estate agent in negotiations.

The other way of looking at it is:
We really like your house (compliment!)
But our max budget is x
So we’re making the low offer, not because we feel like you’re asking too much, but because that’s the top of our budget.
We know it’s a long shot but wanted you to know our position in case it works for you.

Just a different spin!!