Desperate for a particular house

toddler9 · 4 October 2017 at 3:43PM

Hello All

After some advice really. So after waiting for months for a property to come on the market that ticks all of our boxes, one finally came on the market 2 weeks ago

We viewed and loved it and put our house on the market with the same agent on Friday. We live in a popular area and things tend to sell quickly. So far we have had 5 viewings all of which said the house was too small for what they needed. Not a lot I can do about that, but we have decided to take some furniture out today (armchair in living room and wardrobe in bedroom) to make it appear more spacious. More pictures will be loaded tomorrow to show this…

Today the agent tells me they have had a lowball offer on the house we wanted to buy – he thinks it will be rejected. I laid my cards on the table and said what I was willing to pay for the house if ours should sell for close to asking price, and he said he will feed this back to the vendor as it is significantly more than the other people have offered. I am not sure what to do, we are desperate for this house. I talked to the agent about dropping the price of ours – it’s fairly priced considering the competition but I am worried there is quite a lot on the market in the same bracket at the moment. I said about dropping £10k then offering £10k less on the house we wanted to buy. He said have a think about it overnight…

Another thought was to offer to rent the house we want to buy until we sold ours?

Any advice appreciated thank you!

spadoosh · 4 October 2017 at 3:53PM

Put your house on the market, get an offer and then look for properties.

Doing it your way you find houses that you want that youre in no position to buy.

Personally i wouldnt rush to drop the price of my house if i thought thats what its value was. It also highlights that youre desperate so expect every offer to be taking you for a ride.

It does sounds like things are all moving quickly so it might all work out for you (5 viewings in a few days is pretty good). I would leave it at im prepared to pay £xxx however need to sell my house. Id expect them to say something like 'we'll accept (if its acceptable to them) but keeping it on the market as youre high risk'. Fair enough. When im in a position to proceed i will go in with the final offer... the £xxx amount and removed from the market.

G_M · 4 October 2017 at 3:53PM

Forgetthe renting idea

The vendors won't want to be landlords, to get consent from their lender, to pay tax, to be stuck with you as tenants if yours does not sell etc etc etc

If you want this property so much that money is no object, then drop the price on yours to ensure it sells fast, and offer the asking price on the one you want.

Natbag · 4 October 2017 at 4:05PM

This was similar to us. Saw our perfect house, put ours up for sale with the same agent, luckily it sold quickly but our sale fell through and it took us a fortnight to find another buyer, just before the house we wanted was due to go back on the market.
We did reduce the price a little, but stated 'offers over'. That way, notifications were sent via Rightmove and we generated some new interest and secured a price we were happy with quickly, so that may be an option.
In the meantime, de-clutter and re-arrange. We had two viewers say the house was to small, so we cleared out more clutter, packed things away we didn't need, put some larger items away and moved furniture around/took some out to create more space and a better traffic flow through the open plan downstairs space. I think this definitely helped. On viewings, if you have small rooms, make sure you allow viewers to enter and you stay out, or it does start to feel small. Make sure all blinds and curtains are fully open, doors all open and all lights are on.
Good luck, I hope it all falls into place for you.

dlmcr · 4 October 2017 at 7:14PM

What from you have posted it does not really sound as if you are desperate for that house. You should sell your house first,complete on that transaction, move into rented, and that way you would ensure that you would be in a strong position to make a move as soon as your ideal house cam onto the market. As it stands you are in competition with first time buyers and cash buyers / investors. If I was selling your dream house I would favour those two groups rather than a "buyer" whose house has barely even been put onto the market far less being in a proceedable position.

toddler9 · 4 October 2017 at 10:20PM

Thank you some very good advice!
I am well aware that the norm is to sell first then look to buy but life doesn't always work out that way. The house we want to buy has very limited appeal - which is why we thought we could quickly get ours on the market!

chappers · 4 October 2017 at 11:41PM

All of this you have to sell first before buying is total pants, it happens the other way round all the time. different people work to different timescales and have different criteria for accepting offers.

Sounds like you want the house and are willing to make a decent offer.
Put that offer to the vendor and see what they say, the EA will let them know how proceedable you are or they will ask.
See what happens and see if they will accept your offer, either outright or with condition that they will keep marketing it looking for a better offer.
I wouldn't go panicking too much yet on your sale. Your house is obviously priced right and attracting interest and it sounds like you are doing the right things to try and generate a sale, one thing I would say is be careful of removing storage to try to create the illusion of space.
If your offer is accepted or you need to up it, don't panic too much, if it turns out you can't get enough for your house to buy the other one, whilst it might be disappointing for you and a bit of a nuisance for the vendor you can always pull out of the deal.

As an example we are just about to complete on the purchase of a property with 2 holiday lets and 12 acres of land where we are going to set up a campsite.
It has taken us nearly 5 years of looking to find the right property in the right location and also had a couple of other deals fall down at the first hurdle. There is no way we could have accepted an offer on our place without having secured somewhere first.
Wouldn't have even considered selling up and putting the cash in the bank when house prices in our area have risen around 10% year on year over the last 5 years.
When you are looking for something specific that doesn't come to the market very often the general rules change.

Debtslayer · 5 October 2017 at 7:31AM

I wouldn't be dropping price on your house yet, you're getting viewings so it must be priced right and you said properties sell quickly in your area
Need to stay calm and stop panicking. Put your offer in on the other house with a statement saying your house is on market and you're confident it will sell in X amount of weeks. Vendor may well accept especially if your offer is significantly more than offer they've had

somethingcorporate · 5 October 2017 at 8:45AM

chappers wrote: »

All of this you have to sell first before buying is total pants, it happens the other way round all the time. different people work to different timescales and have different criteria for accepting offers.

Sounds like you want the house and are willing to make a decent offer.
Put that offer to the vendor and see what they say, the EA will let them know how proceedable you are or they will ask.
See what happens and see if they will accept your offer, either outright or with condition that they will keep marketing it looking for a better offer.
I wouldn't go panicking too much yet on your sale. Your house is obviously priced right and attracting interest and it sounds like you are doing the right things to try and generate a sale, one thing I would say is be careful of removing storage to try to create the illusion of space.
If your offer is accepted or you need to up it, don't panic too much, if it turns out you can't get enough for your house to buy the other one, whilst it might be disappointing for you and a bit of a nuisance for the vendor you can always pull out of the deal.

As an example we are just about to complete on the purchase of a property with 2 holiday lets and 12 acres of land where we are going to set up a campsite.
It has taken us nearly 5 years of looking to find the right property in the right location and also had a couple of other deals fall down at the first hurdle. There is no way we could have accepted an offer on our place without having secured somewhere first.
Wouldn't have even considered selling up and putting the cash in the bank when house prices in our area have risen around 10% year on year over the last 5 years.
When you are looking for something specific that doesn't come to the market very often the general rules change.

The last two houses I bought we offered before ours was even on the market. With a decent agent who uses a good photographer and presents the house well can get rid of a house at the right price very quickly.

Our last agent was so confident he would sell it within 2 weeks that he gave us a very low commission % (0.9% inc VAT iirc) and no tie in. It took him 5 days to get a price within 2% of asking.

Surrey_EA · 5 October 2017 at 8:46AM

toddler9 wrote: »

We live in a popular area and things tend to sell quickly. So far we have had 5 viewings all of which said the house was too small for what they needed.

I talked to the agent about dropping the price of ours – it’s fairly priced considering the competition but I am worried there is quite a lot on the market in the same bracket at the moment. I said about dropping £10k then offering £10k less on the house we wanted to buy. He said have a think about it overnight…

What the viewers who have been round so far are telling you is that the price of your property is currently too high, and they feel they can find better value, and larger, elsewhere.

If you want to sell quickly you need to make the price look attractive. Particularly if you've already seen somewhere you are keen to buy.

Surrey_EA · 5 October 2017 at 9:16AM

toddler9 wrote: »

I laid my cards on the table and said what I was willing to pay for the house if ours should sell for close to asking price, and he said he will feed this back to the vendor as it is significantly more than the other people have offered.

Why would you do this when you have yet to establish what you will sell your present property for? Surely this will have a bearing on what you are prepared to pay?

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Desperate for a particular house

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