Not much over the home report value

[Brosources]

Looking to offer on a house in a rural area that needs a lot of work doing to it. It’s our dream house and we’re planning to do one room at a time over a number of years. The estate agent told us today that due to its condition he doesn’t expect it to go for too much more than the home report value. What do you think this means, a few thousand more or 10% more? I know this is pure speculation but really trying not to get excited and failing miserably.

I bought a similar doer upper property for the HR value exactly. This was a year ago. There was no other interest and had been for sale a while, though. So, it probably depends on whether there are other people willing to bid and if the owners are keen to sell/been waiting a while for an offer.
With mine I originally bid under HR value due to the amount of work needing done.. the sellers refused which was fair enough and we negotiated to the HR figure.

That’s encouraging! We couldnt go as far as 10% over so good to know that it’s possible to get it closer to get something closer to HR value.

Has it gone to closing?

If it hasn't, there's nothing stopping you putting in an offer now at or near home report and seeing if they're prepared to accept it.

Are you able to move quickly if they accept it?

You can always up your offer if they don't accept it initially or if they set a closing date.

I know the market in Aberdeen/shire is slow. Also recently sold a doer upper near Glasgow which did go over HR but not 10%

Dh and I saved ds £10,000

He'd lost out on a flat he really wants when it went to closing, so when a similar one came on the market, he was going to offer £126k straight away (home report was £110k)

We told he him that as a closing date hadn't been set, he had nothing to lose by putting an offer in. If they didn't accept it and then decided set a closing date instead, he could always up his offer.

So he put in an offer of something like £116,111 (we forgot to tell him that he didn't need to do the "odd" extra amount as it wasn't a sealed bid) and it was accepted

A closing date has been set for next week. I wonder if it’s worth putting in an offer and seeing if they accept it before then. There have been a couple of notes of interest but no offers yet.

If they've already set a closing date, I don't think there's much point imho.

You have to decide how much it is worth to you and bid that. You might end up paying more than you needed to - but you also need to factor in how disappointed you would be if you didn't get it

Make sure for sealed bids to put in a random "extra" amount, eg of £11 or £111 (depending on what you're bidding).

When we got our current house, we apparently won it "by less than the content of a wallet"

Yeah I think we’re going to work out how much we need to get it liveable, put that to the side and then offer what we have left. Everything crossed we’re lucky too!

I think it depends where you are too. We’re in East Dunbartonshire and things are still going for a lot over- including doer uppers. If you could research how much over other houses have gone for and get a feel for what it could mean?

It's totally area dependent.
You need to do your research

You can also look up what properties in the area have sold for recently - so you can make your own assessment.

Just so you know, highest bidder doesn't always win. We weren't highest bidder (by thousands, not hundreds) on our current house, simply because the seller liked us. Lack of a chain, flexibility over moving in dates, things like that can swing it for you - do sone homework before you make your offer.

Don’t offer now if a closing date has been set. Wait. And as a PP said, it’s not always the highest bidder that gets the property. More often it’s the person best able to proceed. Ie house is worth £200,000. One offer at closing is £220 but they’ve still to sell, another is £215 but nothing to sell. Second offer could get it.

Thanks all. We’ve worked out our best offer so will put that it for the closing date. Even if we don’t get it we’ll know we’ve given it our best shot!

Good luck

We’ve been trying to buy in East Dunbartonshire for a while now, it’s nuts , have finally succeeded by offering quite a lot over . But disappointed that we’ve sold ours barely over the HR value in another area.