How much are you negotiating off?

[Fifi0102]

We are wanting to move house upsize by a fair amount we have seen a new build but I know they don't like to reduce the price they give you a deposit contribution etc. I have also seen a few pre-owned properties I like but prices seem very ambitious..I live in Cheshire in a small town. How much are people successfully negotiating down ? I'm wondering whether to wait another year.

Still going to offers over here, it’s a hot market for decent houses (not too far away from you).

Definitely not a hot market here everything is just sitting with small reductions.

Sold prices across the country are still 5% up on this time last year so I am not sure that big discounts can be expected. I think there were some reductions in price over the winter, but with spring coming and the interest outlook being better than it was a couple of months ago, I imagine it will pick up again soon.

Why is everyone determined to talk up the market? My house will likely be worth less oh well I will negotiate on the next one. Prices are falling because houses are sitting a long time and reducing. I get there are micromarkets but my area lots of stuff is sitting. I was asking anyone who had bought recently what sort of price they managed to get and percentage off.

I honestly think it depends. I saw 8 properties last week. One I would probably go in just under asking (3%) as think it was a v fair price and meets our requirements almost perfectly . One was insanely overpriced given condition and odd layout (and also relative to 2 other houses for sale on same road) so I'd probably give them a silly offer (to them) ad be prepared to walk. My attitude is there is always another house- I don't believe in "the one" for houses any more than for people. Overbid on my first flat and even though the market moved and I made a lot of money on it, I still slightly resent being " had" (fake "final bids" situation by agent- obvious in hindsight). Never again.

we’ve offered £10K under the asking, it has already been reduced. Waiting to hear!

Yes the only time I've offered very close to asking price was the house I'm sat in still got 7k off but it was a bargain to begin with. The fake bids happens more than people say, I just assume 99 percent of estate agents are lying. I guess it's still a Mexican standoff between sellers and buyers. I think I'm going to hold until next year as that's when my DD starts secondary. So hard when you feel mentally done with your house 🤣.

Give it time. I lived in the Netherlands for 5 years after the financial crisis. Prices went down 20 percent nationwide over that period, but gradually. Both banks and sellers wanting to avoid negative equity.

Three major new developments here, all different national builders. They have not reduced prices but are offering and advertising 5% as a deposit contribution and I am sure that will be the starting position. Some plots also have upgrades and flooring etc that you'd usually pay for.

Considering they raised prices by 10% over the past year it's not much of an offer but a lot better than they were offering six months ago.

You could check out Moving Home with Charlie (TikTok, YouTube) as he circulated a list of housebuilders following a radio interview with details of how much each of them marks up a property - no point asking for 15% if their profit margin is only 12% for example.

That's just not true:
www.nationwidehousepriceindex.co.uk/reports/annual-house-price-growth-turns-negative-in-february-falling-to-its-weakest-level-since-2012

It depends on your local market. Markets are falling in a lot of areas so lots more people are getting reductions. Unless you have pressing reasons to move, I would wait another year.
I second the recommendation to moving home with Charlie on YouTube. He is very sensible and backs everything up with data.

We have just accepted an offer, on for £350, they offered £325 initially, we have accepted £332.

We were buying something on for £475, £465 was rejected and we settled on £468 but this looks to now be falling through as our vendors were gazumped and had been selling for that house really. I was slightly kicking myself thinking we should have gone in lower anyway.

Nice fully done stuff that is sensibly priced seems to be shifting, stuff needing work or optimistically priced is hanging around. A lot of the new listed stuff is reductions rather than new instructions.

We were due to see something a couple of weeks ago which to be fair was quite reasonably priced and someone had made an above asking price offer prior to any viewings so we never got to see it.

We have just seen something that’s been on at £525 for 6 weeks and considering what to offer. It’s tricky!

We had an offer of 405k accepted on a property on for 450k last week.

I agree that stuff needing work is sticking around. I've renovated before but wouldn't currently consider it - you can't get trades until about 2025 and nobody can tell you what it'll all cost except it's about a million percent more than two years ago. Add in that vendors seem to think that it'll cost you tuppence, so that's how much less they're asking than the fully renovated one next door, and it's not worth it unless you've already got trades lined up.

That is so good! What area are you in?

South of Bristol. We weren’t expecting them to actually accept ! It does need work which is putting people off I think but we have a fair few people lined up so isn’t as daunting as it could be. Survey later this week and be interesting to see what surveyor says - from a picture he thought it wasn’t too bad, let’s see what he says after properly seeing it.

You are close but the correct answer is... 100% of estate agents are lying. 😆

I'm thinking of downsizing because this house is way too big for our needs now, but spending the same money on a smaller house in a better area. I was thinking of a new build too, for ease of maintenance and hopefully better EPC rating. Watching this thread with interest.

I think new builds generally don’t love bringing the purchase price down (although they may) but I’d say worth negotiating on things like - will they throw in flooring costs/kitchen upgrades/grass, will they pay your stamp duty? Basically they don’t want to reduce the sale price as it affects ongoing valuations but there might be other things they’re game for to start with! And if it’s looking really sketchy for them -
especially coming up to year end/quarter end etc then maybe they’ll wiggle on price.

''@Fifi0102

Why is everyone determined to talk up the market?''

I noticed that as well a lot on property threads.

I think it is because many of the people commenting will be home owners or landlords who can't possibly entertain the fact that the market might be heading down...

There is also often a bias to support sellers as well, rather than buyers.

I'm a homeowner unless you are downsizing or exiting the market completely there's no benefits to really high prices. I'm not expecting to get the figure my house was worth in summer 2022 but I will negotiate on my ongoing property.

@Fifi0102

I completely agree but somehow too many people just don't have the common sense to see that high prices don't benefit most of us.

It is that mentally of feeling ''wealthy'' because your house on paper has gone up by 50K but conveniently forgetting that your next purchase will also have gone up so you won't be making any real profit and that your kids won't be able to afford to buy...

All very bizarre to me but somehow the myth that house prices going up is good just carries on.

Seems to still be fairly hot where I am (Brighton), a house we viewed went for £30k over asking price within a month of being on the market, and another one also went for over asking price though I don't know by how much.

Our property has been on the market for a couple of weeks and we've had a lot of viewings, will be interesting to see what offer we may get but also makes me very weary of offering below asking for whatever house we'll want to make an offer on.