I want to offer low

[Rosalindisafuckingnightmare]

Please Mumsnet Gurus, I think this house is on for too much. I do like it but think it’s worth less. And can’t afford the asking price!

It’s title would be 3 bed semi but it does have quite a lot of space - there’s a downstairs room with an adjacent bathroom which could be an office, playroom or spare room plus an extended kitchen-diner-living space and separate living room and utility and some garage storage space remains from the conversion. There’s a loft conversion and they have an office and double bed up there but clearly not to building regs - actually accessed by ladder. It’s in a nice area of a nice city

It’s on for £550k, only since November. Nothing on the street has ever sold for any number starting with 5. Most expensive sale on the street in sold history was 451k in March 2020 for a 3 bed. A 3 bed semi on the street went for 420k in 2021, and a 3 bed plus en-suite bedroom in external garage went for 425k in 2021. A properly loft converted 4 bed but 4th bed a tiny box went for £425k in 2018. There’s not loads coming on the market at the moment. They bought it back in 2004.

Any tips on where we could pitch that’s not us being totally daft and not going to completely alienate the seller (less fussed on this as we could wait and look for something else) or black list us with the agent as CFs?

It's interesting to see that some posters do actually think that advertised house prices are gospel though, or think that 4.5% is a major reduction to ask for in a falling market! Those people are the ones who push prices up, aren't they? Sellers know some people will overpay, so they chance their arm.

Book a viewing and go see it yourself. Ask pertinent questions, like was the loft conversion signed off, age of boiler, state of roof etc. Maybe it has expensive fitted kitchen appliances, marble worktops, top-notch bathrooms. Is there PP for an extension, a larger than average garden... These things do add value.

The EA will ask for feedback. You can say that it's lovely/ nice/ needs work but you can't really understand why it's worth £100k more than similar houses that sold in 2021, particularly now the market's falling. They may ask if you want to make an offer and you could say you wouldn't want to insult the owners by saying what you think it's worth, but if they'd consider an offer of £455k (or whatever you decide) then the EA can put it to them. They'll probably say no. You go off and look for other houses and if you can't find anything better in a month or two you can go back and see if they've softened.

😂

Give over. It's been priced by a 23-year-old in a shiny suit hoping for a nice big commission.

View and put an offer in. No one here can tell you what others will offer and what rhe vender will accept.

just don’t make the mistake of deciding it’s coincidentally only worth exactly what you can afford.

As a few posters have said, it's not going to do any harm to put in a low offer. Say £20,000 to £30,000 less. However.......like a few people have said, as it's only been for sale for a few weeks, (if you take Christmas out of the equation,) it's unlikely that they will accept anything under. £540,000. (at this stage.......)

We bought a house some years ago. It was on the market for say - £175,000 - and we put in £150,000 because it needed a new kitchen and new bathroom and new windows and new heating system. We were turned down. It was still for sale 2 months later, so we put £155,000 in, it was turned down. Another month later, it's still for sale, so we put 160,000 in. They accepted it. It had been for sale for 6 months at that point. Not MASSIVELY long, but they did want to sell it as they had already left the country.

Long story short, with the house YOU want, the sellers probably won't accept a lower offer now, but if it's still for sale in say, 4 or 5 months then they probably will. As a previous poster said - the house (like anything,) is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Say £20,000 to £30,000 less.

Just 5% under isn't actually "a low offer". It's a pretty standard offer unless you're in a very overheated, fast moving market.

This is pretty much what I'd do. When I last moved there was a house for sale at an inflated price. We viewed it, and spoke to the EA along these lines - didn't make a formal offer but gave an indication of what we'd have been happy to pay for it (it needed full renovation, but wasn't priced accordingly, what we were happy to pay was about 25% under asking).

The EA said they weren't considering offers as it was still new to the market - fine, we ended up buying a different house.

When it eventually sold, I checked what it had gone for.... it had sold after several months on the market for only about 2% more than we had suggested to start with. So we were right - the EA and seller were being unrealistic.

That is why I give short shrift to people claiming that the house has been "professionally valued" or suggesting that 5% under is a cheeky/low offer. It is entirely dependent on the house and the market. If I put my house on the market for tomorrow for 1.5× it's real value, then 5% under would be a stupid offer, not a sensible one.

@pattihews Thank you, this is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of but you’ve given an excellent script.

And @AreOttersJustWetCats this is exactly what I’m concerned about - massively overpaying and/or very unrealistic sellers.

I have booked to see it and they were very flexible about when. Don’t know how much to read into that!

I agree with the sentiment of this. But 1.5 X its real value (it it were valued at £450,000,) would be around £675,000. Asking that would be bonkers. Did you mean if you put your house on the market tomorrow for a fifth more than its worth ??? Rather than 1.5 X more, which is 50% more?

It was a deliberately silly example.

But then the house in the OP appears to have been overpriced by about £100k (going purely on the info provided), so crazy pricing does happen.

Also, the house in the real life example I gave above was priced at roughly 1.33× its actual value (that's what the 25% reduction works out at). People can and do price houses bizarrely high, just to see if anyone bites!

It sounds very over priced from what you have said about comparators.
I think @pattihews advice is really sensible, see the house, ask the questions to try to assess if there is a reason this house is on the market for 25% more than other houses. It may be that the EA haven't got their head around the fact that prices have fallen and continue to fall, it may be an unrealistic seller.
I would see what their answers are and, unless it is clearly worth more than the other houses, hold off on making an offer and tell the EA frankly that you like the house but think it is very over priced and that you are not interested at this time.

Can you call the agents and have a candid chat with them? I have done this numerous times and you are under no obligation by doing so. You can mention that you like the house but that your budget is XYZ and ask the sellers position. They will usually tell you if there has been a lot of interest and whether they have had other offers. They won’t normally tell you what these are obviously, but by knowing this, you can then ask them whether it would be worth you seeing it, or whether you are way off in terms of affordability.

This has all recently happened to me. Liked a house that was originally listed a few months ago way, way over our budget. Spoke to the agent and they said that the owners wouldn’t accept anywhere close to what we could afford. Fast forward a few months and it came back onto the market. Spoke to the agent again and we are now waiting to exchange on it in the next 2 weeks for significantly less than what our first offer would have been!

Agents and sellers expectations are not always correct!

Good luck

This is exactly why we asked out EA not to bring anyone round to view who couldn’t provide proof of funds for the asking price. We didn’t get any silly offers, fewer viewings to deal with and actually sold for what we wanted. I wouldn’t even view a house more than 50k over my absolute max budget personally. You can offer whatever you like but i can’t see why they would accept such a low offer when they’ve priced it at what they want not that long ago. They won’t sell if no one wants to pay that of course but I suspect they’ll reduce if they want to sell for less too.

Speak to the agent. Part of their job of selling a house is dealing with potential buyers rather as well as the sellers. Ask them to explain the price. Perhaps the buyer has instructed this contrary to what the agent valued it at.

@CurlyClairey

The OP has done her due diligence and knows that the house is being priced £100k above the previous top selling price for that street. The market is falling. OP can afford the house at £100k less.

Maybe you priced your house sensibly, however, from the information given, the vendors for this particular house seem to be taking the piss.

@Pipsquiggle I can see your point but I just think they’re the vendors - they can ask for whatever they want really! It’s not taking the pies as no one has to respond at all if they don’t want to. I think it takes the piss when people view and offer on houses they can’t afford and decided themselves that they’re worth X amount (which is usually miraculously just inside their own budget).

There is no such thing as a correct 'value' for a house. It is a total myth, made up by estate agents and Zoopla and those fanatics on the housepricecrash website.

There are only three numbers that matter. The lowest price the owner would be prepared to sell it at. The highest price you can afford and are willing to pay. And the highest price someone else would be prepared to pay. Your don't know two of these numbers - hence the anxiety. But you can calculate the middle one.

Offer what it's worth to you. If your offer is higher than every other bidder's, and also higher than the owner's minimum sales price - you will have a deal.

If the offer is too low, the seller either won't accept, or someone else will be the preferred bidder. In that scenario - move on. If you don't want that to happen - offer a higher amount. Right up to the point where you really wouldn't care if the seller rejected your offer as it wasn't worth more than that to you. Don't fret about whether the offer is too high - you've got 25 years to pay that off and you will probably never think about it ever again.

There is no magic formula whereby the eventual sales price instantly becomes the new 'value' for that house and of every other house in the street too. There is nothing about the formula described about that means that there must be other people who would have come up with the same offer. Everyone is unique. Every house is unique. You are entering into a commercial negotiation - and the eventual sales price has as much to do with your reading of the seller and what matters to them as it has to do with interpreting historic sold prices.