How to get this house!

[Travelcrazy]

We decided a couple of weeks ago that we want to move house, first time we browsed Rightmove we found our dream house. Needs modernising and we would extend, it has been reduced by £35k. It has been on the market since May and is a probate house. We rang to view but werent allowed until we went on the market so we put ours on the market this week and are viewing today.
I looked at it again on Rightmove this morning and it has been reduced by another 20K! We really want this house but without offers how can we approach it? We won't need a mortgage once ours has sold.
Any advice gratefully received, thanks.

Is your house for sale with the same estate agent as the house you want to offer on? Also let the estate agent know you are very keen but be careful not to let estate agent think you will sell your house for peanuts.

You’re not in a strong bargaining position as you haven’t sold your own house yet and need to in order to proceed with a purchase.

I wouldn’t personally make an offer at this stage as if you do the EA will use it to make the property seem more appealing to other potential buyers by telling them it has received an offer but the offer was not accepted.

I would tell the EA you are interested and will probably make an offer once your own property sells, assuming this one is still available. Ask them to let you know if anything changes & focus hard on doing whatever you can to get your own house sold by presenting it well & being realistic with the asking price

I think you can still remind them you’ll be in a very good place of not needing a mortgage once your house sells, and since this property has been on the market for some months you’d be a solid buyer.

I’d offer asking price, and ask if on the basis you’ll be good to proceed as soon as you get an offer would they consider taking it off the market as soon as you get an offer? They may not be willing to but at least it’d show how keen you are.

Whats the market like for houses like yours? Are they selling quickly?

I wouldn’t personally make an offer at this stage as if you do the EA will use it to make the property seem more appealing to other potential buyers by telling them it has received an offer but the offer was not accepted.

I doubt they’d get away with anyone believing it was a highly sought after property since it’s been dropped in price so much and still on the market. They might say it, but EA say all kinds of nonsense, it’s not logical that anyone would believe that while it’s still on the market at a lower value.

If it's probate you might be in a good position as you are not part of a chain. You are sort of a cash buyer as in not needing a mortgage.

Consider not carrying out surveys on the property if you feel you are in a position to do this, all depends on the house and any possible risk. Surveys are only required by mortgage companies.

I disagree with you @Changingplace I think people would believe the house has received an offer and it would be the truth. What the EA may neglect to mention is that the offer was from someone not in a position to proceed. It could be wrongly assumed that the offer was rejected as not high enough. It’s a common EA tactic to mention if a property has already received an offer but they can use confidentiality to not disclose the actual amount or position of the person making the offer.

I also disagree with your suggestion that @Travelcrazy offers full asking price. They should wait until their own property is sold and then decide how much to offer. Who knows - this house could have been reduced again in that time or languished on the market tor ages so they could get it for well below asking.

Ok well thanks for the replies, EA has said ours should sell quickly because it is all newly decorated so presents well it has a beautiful private garden and is in a good area for schools. We wouldn't have a survey as DH is pretty clued up.
I like the idea of asking if they will take it off the market when we get an offer. It is a steal at the new asking price so I am very nervous although some people mat find the work daunting.

Why wouldn’t they take it off the market as soon as an interested buyer gets an offer so can proceed ( assuming the buyer offers a price they find acceptable)?

It’s usual to take a property off the market as soon as a price is agreed by a proceed able buyer so I’m confused by that.

Apart from saying we don't need a mortgage is there anything else we should say to strengthen our chances?

When we bought our house we knew the sellers were very motivated to move quickly so we told them we wouldn’t be getting a survey to signal to them that we were completely motivated to get the deal wrapped up quickly too.

You’ve indicated on here that you won’t be getting a survey & that will be a positive point in your favour.

This sounds exciting OP! Fingers crossed crossed for you 😀

No advice other to say that we did the exact same thing! A house that ticks all our boxes apart from needing a refurb, been on the market for nearly 5 months and reduced heavily in that time, making it within reach for us.

We decided to put ours on the market and see what happened. Solidarity OP, I was checking right move all day everyday to check it hadn't sold before we were in a position to view and make an offer!!

Luckily our house sold within two weeks and we are now anxiously waiting to hear if they've accepted our revised offer. So my only advice, with things like this that you want so badly is to try and relax, and let the universe decide! If it's meant to be it will be.

Let us know how you get on, good luck!! :)

Maybe wonder why they are dropping the price and it is not selling.

Is it because it was vastly overpriced to begin with ? Or is it because people are finding out something about it ?

All you can do is market your house for a realistic price so that you receive offers quickly. Once you have done this, offer what you are prepared to pay. If it is really 'a steal' there will be other interested parties so sell your positive points (not needing finance and not undertaking a survey) to the sellers.

I was absolutely desperate to buy the house we have now. We wanted something quite specific and to be honest, couldn’t really afford that.
This house ticked all the boxes and was in budget. We weren’t on the market yet as we were so limited with budget.

We had bought our old house 2 years before at height of covid, they had an open day and had 3 asking price offers that day so were fairly confident of a quick sale so we offered 5k over asking on the condition they gave us a 2 week grace period to sell our house. Most stressful 2 weeks of my life but we managed to pull it off.

Might be worth a shot?

Could you afford to mortgage your current house to the max and buy this house that way? Obviously you wouldn't want to do this long term, but that would turn you into immediately proceedable cash buyers.

We were in this position early August. The EA would not accept our offer as anything other than an ‘expression of interest’ until we had a confirmed offer on ours. As soon as we had an offer, our offer was accepted and the house taken off the market.
Ours took a month to sell. We were also looking at empty, ‘project’ houses and some EA would not even let us look until we had an offer on ours as we were not in a ‘proceedable position’.
We are now in a small chain, just our buyers buyers (who are FTB); our buyers, us (we don’t need a mortgage once ours is sold) and the empty property we are buying. Our buyers haven’t had a survey (they must have had the drive by valuation one but that’s it) and neither have we. I think us not needing a mortgage was a plus point for us but no one cared til we had an offer

I would respectfully say please get a survey! If it is an older property, all sorts of nasty surprises might be lurking that you can't see - would it still be your "dream property" if it was riddled with dry rot, an incomplete damp proof course, dodgy wiring etc etc? A surveyor can pick up many things a lay person can't, however clued up they are!

Thanks so much for all your help :)
We viewed it yesterday and still like it very much however there was a man there walking around videoing the inside and saying very loudly to the EA that his son is a developer and he is currently in Spain, he will be back on Thursday and putting in a cash offer :(
We did view another one in the same village that I absolutely loved and is ready to move in to but DH said that extension is badly laid out and won't work for us so I feel pretty bad about how it all went now.

The developer may put in an insultingly low offer so be declined!! Remember the developer will need to make a profit and therefore his offer is likely to be lower than what you would offer. So you still have a very good chance.

No certainty that this will happen, nor that the offer will be accepted. The family may also prefer to sell to another family rather than a developer.

Just make sure that your house is realistically priced so that you are getting lots of interest and offers asap. This gives you the best chance of getting your offer accepted.

I agree with the above post about making your house seem a fair price as you say this house is a steal!

That's encouraging thank you 😊

The main thing you need to do is sell your house. You need to make sure your estate agent knows you need a fast sale and generally that's going to mean being pricing your house so it also looks like a complete steal.

Well we have made an offer, fingers crossed!