Talk to me about tactics on negotiating on a new build ...

[flippyfloppy]

Hi, it looks like we are going to get an offer on our home and we are planning to buy a new development this time, houses will not be ready to move into for 4-6 months. We have been advised that there can be good savings to make when offering on a new development. We have been up to development a couple of times but tried not to appear "too" keen, there are three houses out of about 12 which would be of interest to us.We have only ever bought old houses in the past and would like to know how best to negotiate on price. Would love to hear from anyone who has done it or from anyone who works as a sales advisor for a housing developer. TIA

My friend works for a housing developer and would probably say to put in a realistic but certainly a reduced offer and see how you go. The housing market is sure to slow before xmas and a sale will help their sales figures at a typically slow time. On our local new build estate, a 3 bed house with the same asking price has been sold with a difference of about £70,000 between the highest and lowest price so definitely worth negotiating!!!

Depends who the developer is, the size of property you're buying, what stage the build is at and what position you're in.

If you're about to sell and therefore in a great position, developers will be keen to talk to you.

We're just about to exchange on our third new build property this time with Persimmon. Persimmon were happy to negotiate largely because they only had a few houses left to sell on the development and we were buying one of the larger homes so more room to negotiate. The deal we got was fantastic - £25k off the asking price, estate agents fees paid, stamp duty paid and cash to make up the difference between the offer price on our property and the sale price we wanted. They were really flexible and have been very good all the way through 3 broken chains.

Prior to settling on this house, we paid a deposit on a Barratt house - same asking price but when it came to it Barratt just wouldn't negotiate (lower margins probably) and just hard to do business with (though that does seem to vary between their regions. That property is still unsold so 'yah boo sucks' to Barratt in my book

Interesting....thanks for your responses, definatley sounds like there may be room for negotiation then, I'll not be shy to put in an offer once we are in a position to proceed. Sallypuss, it is a Persimmon estate we are looking at, although they are just at the start of the development.