Making an offer on a house

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Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
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Liverpool
We're just in the process of buying a new house and we've found one we really like the look of but can't decide how much to offer on it. It's a lovely house and it would be perfect for us! It's been on the market since March and it's up for £240k. It's in good condition, however it's owned by two old people and the decor reflects this. Everything looks dated and would need a good over haul to bring it up to scratch. New carpets, blinds, painting etc. The windows are old but double glazed although they could probably do with being replaced in the future. The external doors are old and the back one isn't great. I would like to replace these for security reasons and also install an alarm. The kitchen looks quite dated and we would like to update this in the future too.

We've had a look at house prices near by and the maximum a house has sold for on that road is £223k. One sold a few doors down for £215k in March, and although it is slightly smaller (142m2 compared to 156m2) it had been completely modernised inside and out and looked amazing.

Would an offer of £215k be a bit low? I don't want them to think I'm taking the mick!
 
We'll be in the same position when we buy (same figure). I don't think it's unreasonable to go 10% under the asking price as a first offer.
You could also offer £235k and request exclusivity and removal from the market if you wanted to guarantee it.
 
Depends on location at present. Anything good round here will get snapped up a asking price (sometimes more) in a week. Anything that has been on since March has something wrong with it or the seller's are awkward.

Estate agents are badgering us telling us we can get 50k over rrp because there's nothing around for sale but then again there's nothing to buy without doubling the mortgage.
 
if you dont ask you dont get. Go in low and see what happens. Even consider an offer of 200k on the understanding that a lot of work needs doing to the place. As has been said the worst they can say is no. The fact its been on the market since March indicates its not moving quickly you might find that that owners are happy to wait out the right price and will stubbornly not shift off their 240k price.

Be cautious and dont over pay, youve done your research and nothing in the street is selling for close to the asking price, maybe point this out to the agent when you make the offer and see what happens.

We went low with our offer 6 years ago on the understanding that everything needed doing, kitchen, boiler, bathroom, every room decorated, and windows. Even we were suprised when it was accepted. (~200k for a ~240k at the time house).

If they do say no to your offer and your willing to put in a higher offer make the agent aware of this, quite often i hear of peoples offers being rejected and no attempt is made to put in a better offer, or the agent just lets the lead go cold.
 
Think I'm going to ring them later on today. I'm just waiting on my mortgage advisor to get back to me with the mortgage in principal sorted. We are in a good position as we have a decent deposit and have no chain as I am going to rent my house out instead of selling it. I'll go in at £215k and maybe rise to £225k. I don't want to spend any more than that because of the work that needs doing!
 
All about location and how much its worth to you. I found a house in the perfect location for me a month ago. Needs renovating but i had to go 6k over the asking price for it be be accepted
 
Something that people dont often think about is the bartering room when putting in offers. If you put in a crazy low off 3 things will happen:
1) get laughed at
2) get counter-offered
3) get accepted - total win.

If you get counter offered it means they have already moved from their starting price, and if your still way below the price you were originally going to offer then you are in a stronger position to end up where you want to be.

If you go in at much closer to your preferred offer, you may find your very quickly up to that mark and much more likely to pass it.

Anyway, good luck with your offer :)
 
Based on the fact that the modernised one sold for £215k recently, and you're looking at least £10k to do up the things you mentioned, £215k sounds like a very reasonable offer IMO (£215k + £10k = £225k which is just over the highest selling price of £223k*, and that's ignoring the inconvenience of having to live in a building site for a couple of months :p)

* Although obviously when that price was may have some bearing on the current value
 
Well we put our offer of £215k in and they came back today to reject it. We spoke to the agent and they said the people had a figure of £230k in mind and also that the house has had a lot of interest. There can't have been that much interest if it's been on the market nearly 5 months and they haven't accepted an offer. I'll let them sweat on it for a couple days then go back in with £225k as a final offer, it's not worth any more than that at the highest and the more we spend, the less we have to do it up!
 
10% is certainly not too low. When we made some offers on houses a couple of years ago we were regularly making them as low 10-15% and had many people coming back with some reasonable counter offers. Most people inflate their price by 5-10% anyway.
 
Our house was up for 165, we paid 144.
One down the round the same state of ours when we bought it just went for 190.
Another pretty much refurbed inside and out went for I think 220.

Depends on area and time of the year tho I see some places are selling houses within hours if not day's, Think ours had been up a month or so when we went to view it

we pointed out each and every little thing that needed done to justify our offer
 
Depends where the house is, what the market is like and how well it's valued.

When we were looking at houses 2 years ago, all of the ones we looked at went for above asking.
When we looked this time around (earlier this year) around Cambridgeshire they went for asking.
Our new house in Bedfordshire we got for £5K under asking and sold our previous for asking price.

Around here, anything more than £10K off of asking would be laughed at (on houses houses @ £250K-£300K)
 
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Ditto, round ours you'd be lucky to have an asking price offer accepted, some are going in over asking and then you're only one in a pot of a few, if you have a large mortgage you're stuffed. If you are in a chain you're stuffed. Plenty of cash or low mortgage buyers snapping up houses for sale.
 
~Divine~Wind~ said:
Our house was up for 165, we paid 144.
One down the round the same state of ours when we bought it just went for 190.
Another pretty much refurbed inside and out went for I think 220.

Depends on area and time of the year tho I see some places are selling houses within hours if not day's, Think ours had been up a month or so when we went to view it

we pointed out each and every little thing that needed done to justify our offer
Click to expand...

and pointing out every little thing you 'thought' needed doing to the agent did what exactly? The agent wont give a stuff and nor should they - its not big and certainly not even remotely clever and is as transparent as a window. In fact its laughable.

Insult property = low offer = insult the vendor = loose the purchase regardless of your eventual increase. Don't paly games- either buy it or don't. simple. Sure, make an 'offer' but lets say a place is on for 550k - anything less than £525,000 and you will likely be told to hop it.
 
Happy days.. They got back to us today having accepted our second offer of £225k! Now comes the hassle of getting everything sorted, doesn't help I'm away on holiday this week either. I've also got to redecorate my current house to rent out!
 
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