Offering - interested in your thoughts

[mumdone]

What is the rule of thumb when offering on a property?
Property is 1,445,000 been up for quite a while, needs updating, owners gone into care, single glazing, leaking conservatory. House in the next road which is bigger and modern sold 1,295,000 last week on Rightmove so could’ve been less. The roads are very very similar in terms of both being well sought after and private.

From what you have said, it seems to be grossly over priced (? 20%) and in poor condition with very unrealistic sellers.
There are so many properties like this on RM at the moment, probate/ owned by very elderly folk who haven't even maintained the house, never mind spent money on updating and still expect the same/ nearly the same as the houses that have been very well cared for and updated. They haven't realised still that their houses have fallen in value because works are so much more expensive and older, larger, more expensive to run type houses have fallen out of favour.

I work with elderly people in their homes and many of them have done no work on their properties for 40 years. It's quite common.

Offer as low as you dare.

@rainingsnoring i think people are also clueless about how much it costs to get work done.

As you say, they’ll have not updated anything for 40 years and be happy living with that - so they assume anyone buying it will just be spending £10k to refresh it.

Where actually you could spend £10k doing a small bathroom now - easily. For a proper renovation of a family home you might be looking at £200-300k at that price point, depending on location.

Recently renovated and extended homes on my street sell for about 30% more.

@MidnightPatrol it must be frustrating for people like @mumdone who want to buy and have the budget to do so. @mumdone if you really like the house, you can always offer 3-400K off asking price and just say you will keep it on the table and then move on.

In fairness, we can't really expect the elderly folk who haven't spent a penny on their home in 40 years to know what the cost of work is but their agents should definitely be advising them and so should their children/ grandchildren, etc. Perhaps some of them do get advice but still think they know best! Also, older people have been the group that have gained massively from housing price inflation in the past 30 years so may just assume that the market will rise to meet whatever figure they have in their heads. They might not realise that this is very unlikely, at least not in real terms.

If they've gone into care it might not be them setting the price, but their children or EA. Do some analysis on RM of what similar properties nearby have sold for in the last year or so, look at house metric for price per square foot in that postcode, figure out roughly what needs to be spent, add or subtract according to what it would be worth to you rather than some conjectural 'market value', and take it from there. If you present your reasoning along with the offer then at least they might understand you're not giving a lowball offer just in the hope they'll be so desperate or demented they'll go for it.