Maximum offer?

[Lollypop0101]

Hi all!

So we're looking at a 3 bed link detached that's up for sale for £240000. We've offered our max £225000 as it needs a new boiler, kitchen, wall knocked out, whole house plastered, bathroom, downstairs toilet, rewire, windows doors etc a complete renovation. The owner seems to think that all this work will only cost £20/25K so he won't take any less as he thinks the house would then be worth £300K (no houses in the area have sold for that much!), am I being stupid or is there no way you could do all this for that amount?!

Just need to vent sorry!

No way unless you can do all the work yourself. You wont get much change from £20K just for a kitchen these days.

Knocking through a wall is not part of maintenance or updating. That aside you’ll be looking at £75k > £100k ball park figure. Plus the time and inconvenience.

You can’t expect the owner to cover the cost of knocking walls out or putting a new kitchen in etc. Offer what you think it’s worth and the owner will either agree or not - it’s not an objective fact that can be determined through reasoning, it’s about two parties different views of what something is worth to them.

I've just done kitchen and windows cost me 40k for both and that was without taking any walls down.

Also 2 bathrooms cost me 10k

There’s a difference between what needs to be done and what you’d like to do.

Sometimes updating a house feels like a need, but I f you think about it honestly, it’s a want.

That quibble aside, talking about it with the vendor is a waste of time. Make your best offer. If he refuses, so be it. But he may accept.

I wonder why doesn’t the spend the £20k, sell for £300k and pocket the profit 🤔

Indeed

I don’t think you could do all that for £20K but I’m also not sure about the logic of knocking money off the asking price because of those things, as surely the EA’s valuation and the asking price would have factored the condition of the house in? Do those things objectively need doing or are you assuming they do? If the kitchen is usable just not to your taste that’s different from units falling apart, for example.

It’s different if you can see houses in a similar or better condition having sold in the area so you can compare what they are going for.

Also if your max offer is £225K then that’s what it is! The vendor can’t argue you higher if you’re not going to budge, and neither can you force him to accept it. It’s up to the market to determine if anyone wants to come forward and offer more.

Just to add….vendors can be very unwilling to accept reality though! We offered on a place in October after it had failed to sell at auction. It needed loads and loads doing to it and we offered around 85% guide price and even said our offer wasn’t subject to survey, and we were buying in cash. They took ages coming back but turned it down. Then we went up to 90% - no one else offering or interested. They turned it down again (after several weeks saying nothing) and said they wouldn’t accept a penny less than 95%. We walked away because the figures didn’t add up at that price and we’d wasted 3 months waiting for them to get back to us on our offers. But guess what, 4 months later they still haven’t sold! Some people just can’t accept reality.

The thing is if he has refused your offer then you go and find another house rather than giving them a list of why you think it’s only worth x amount. It’s no good saying it needs this that and the other. It’s up to the vendor what he wants to sell it for, end off.