What would be a reasonable offer in this market?

[Greenfairydust]

I am looking at small 2 bed houses with a maximum budget of £280,000.

I have viewings lined-up for a few places that are listed £280,000-£275,000 after the New Year break and I have already seen one house that I think I might be interested in.

I am looking in a small & popular-ish coastal town but where the market is quite slow at the moment and houses are not shifting very quickly.

Sold my property recently and I have a mortgage in principle ready so I can move fairly quickly.

What would people realistically offer at the moment?

Also, would it be cheeky to view houses that are listed at £300,000 but have been on the market with no interest for a few months and make a lower offer to match my budget?

My requirements are really flexible (don't care about schools & house & garden can be small) & I don't mind something that needs updating so I have quite a few options in that town but a bit at a loss as to play it when it comes to offers.

Any advice most welcome!

Anybody seeing your house listed now wouldn't necessarily know that it was on for 7% higher in August, or that you accepted an offer that was even higher than that. They will just look at today's price. That's why it's ok for buyers to submit offers, and for vendors to choose whether to accept, decline or negotiate without taking it personally or getting offended.

I will always put in lower offers. Even when the market was at peak we put in an offer under asking price.

I'd start with asking 10% off and go from there, if from checking the previous sold prices the sellers are asking for 50% more than what they paid for it in the past 5 years with no justification apart from being greedy (like in my area currently) , I'd goto 15-20% off

We’re in a high demand urban area and the nice houses are still going for well over asking. The market has definitely slowed, and we’ve noticed a lot more reductions, but nicely finished houses are still going for 10%+ over. I don’t think people’s expectations have caught up yet - still definitely worth making an offer though.

If you’re going for a renovation property make sure you fully understand the costs. We’re buying a fixer upper and we were naively optimistic about how much it would cost. It soon adds up if you need bigger specialist jobs like a rewire, work on the roof, etc. We thought £20k would be enough and now I think we’ll be lucky to come in under £40k 😬 We had a healthy amount of savings and we’re racing to save more now!

@rrrrrreatt

''If you’re going for a renovation property make sure you fully understand the costs. We’re buying a fixer upper and we were naively optimistic about how much it would cost. It soon adds up if you need bigger specialist jobs like a rewire, work on the roof, etc. We thought £20k would be enough and now I think we’ll be lucky to come in under £40k 😬 We had a healthy amount of savings and we’re racing to save more now!''

Yes that's a good point. I am going more for places that might need a bit of cosmetic work (new carpets/flooring, painting the walls, tiling, cleaning up neglected gardens) rather than any structural repairs and of course I will get a full structural survey and would adjust the offer accordingly if more work is needed based on the survey findings.

But yes that is definitely something to consider as well when making an offer.

"We’re in a high demand urban area and the nice houses are still going for well over asking. The market has definitely slowed, and we’ve noticed a lot more reductions, but nicely finished houses are still going for 10%+ over."

How do you know the final selling price of a property that sold in recent months? I thought HM Land Registry was taking three months from completion.

Annoyingly where id like to move to they are selling within days, hardly going to be for reduced prices are they

Where is this place? I search a very desirable location (Lytham) and it’s very sticky, and has been since about July.

I’d probably rather not tell you to be honest, but it’s a touristy area.

You may not like hearing this, OP - but nobody else can tell you what you should offer. Nobody else knows what any given house might mean to you. Nobody else really knows what you can (and can't) afford to sacrifice to get the house you really want. At best, they can give an indication of what they might offer ... but really, what use is that information to you - unless you are in the business of flipping houses, in which case the desires of the next owner after you matter a lot more?

There is quite a lot of anxiety that stems from the mistaken belief that there is a valid, knowable, "value" for any house - but this belief is wrong. Sadly, once this belief takes hold, it's very hard not to obsess about whether you offered more than a property was 'worth'. But the thing is ... if you are going to be the successful buyer, you will have to offer more than anyone else thinks it is worth anyway. And, you'll never truly know what the next best alternative offer was. So there's no point obsessing about it. All you can do is apply some principles to calculating what a house is worth to you/

You can't bid more than you can afford. If you bid too close to the limit of what you can afford, you will leave yourself little room for negotiation, or unforeseen eventualities. So that number ... which is a function of your finances, not of the house, gives you a place to start. No harm in nudging it downwards in your opening gambits - after all, this is a commercial negotiation, and one you'll probably be paying for over the next 25 years.

If you bid too little, there is a chance that you will be outbid and you may lose the opportunity to acquire this house, at this time. You should therefore be prepared to increase your offer by enough to ensure this regret does not enter into the equation. Start low, and increase your offer until you reach the point where you would rather walk away, if the seller has not accepted by then. Remember the seller has usually employed an Estate Agent who is very good at 'helping' you identify that point. It's their job ... (!)

And, once you've had an offer accepted, settled on a price, and are in the business of conveyancing ... never, ever, ever think about it again. It doesn't matter anymore. Forget about it. And enjoy living in your home instead. Good luck!

I completely agree with the above, on paper it might look as though I overpaid for this house, but potentially only buy two or three grand when I weigh that up against the fact that I was going to piss £8200 up the wall on rent a couple of grand is neither here nor there. Added into the equation, the fact that we’ve been able to have some stability with our pets. We were literally moving every six months prior to this at a cost of three grand a time, and then there was storage costs because all my furniture didn’t fit into the rentals, plus the cats and dogs inevitably do do some damage so I was losing my bond every time. I lost at least six days in holiday that you just moving house. It all adds to the mental cost, as much as the physical, financial one.

This is absolutely correct, and really well put.

The OP isn’t asking what the final selling price could be, they’re asking what they should offer to secure a house they like. There can be a vast difference between what’s offered and the sale price, and the land registry doesn’t include context like “turned out it needed a whole new roof” etc.

I know what’s been offered because I know people who have recently been successful offering and I’ve asked agents for a rough % idea if we’ve offered and been unsuccessful. We’ve been looking on and off for a year so I’ve checked previous agent comments against the land registry and know they’re generally honest about it.

This is a really interesting thread as for as long as I can remember offers 10% under asking was the thing.

Now with the recession and every news outlet reporting property dropping by 10% at least I'd be unsurprised at 20% under offers to come in 2023, seems it isn't a good time to sell.

Has anyone else noticed in England a big trend now for people listing their houses for 'offers over' I mean, just why? Just put a price. So off putting.

we offered 500 on a 525 house back in july .. we moved in last month .

Thank you so much everyone and I completely take on board the need to think about whether repairs are needed, how long the property has been on the market, how much you like and want the house and so on. I know my top budget as well & won't go beyond that.

I am actually viewing a semi-detached house this weekend on at £280,000 (reduced last month to that amount) which I saw from the outside already and really like the look of. This one is a bit harder to offer on as it is on a fairly new- built estate (7 years) so would only require only new floorings (removing carpets and putting on wood flooring in some of the rooms) from what I can see in the pictures. Small 2nd bedroom though. I can see that late last year a terraced 2 bed sold for £260,000 & a semi-detached 3 bed at £310,000. Very low crime rate (non-existent actually...) on the police crime in your area map and no flooding risk.

Just be realistic in the market at the moment too as where I am barely anything is coming on and things are being reduced on rightmove every single day. So it's a buyer's market for sure at the moment. Offers under is normal and prices are predicted to drop by 10%

Good luck. As the house has had to be reduced, the seller will be thinking that they've already lost £20K which will have affected their buying power, so gauge your offer carefully.