What should I offer on house with large price range not an asking price?

faerycakes

Hello and thanks for reading a newbie's post!

I'm a first time buyer with a £10k deposit and an appointment to see a mortgage advisor this week. I've just been to view a house and absolutely fallen in love with it, but the house is on the market with a huge price range of £180k - £230k. I think my absolute maximum budget would be about £200 - 205k but £18 or £190 would be much more comfortable.

I've looked through all the advice on the forums and can't find any guidance on how to offer on a property with this kind of range. If the property was being marketed at say £200k I would probably feel quite confident offering £190k but I'm worried that the bottom of the price range being £180 I could be paying over the odds. Also that's only £5k more than the stamp duty threshold which has me thinking it would be better to offer £175?

I really want to secure this one and don't want to lose it for a few grand... I would really welcome advice from anyone who's been there, done that please?

Thanks in advance for your help!

hethmar

What a ridiculous thing to do anyway - a price range - whats that sposed to mean.

Be careful not to fall in love faery, because theres always another potential love round the corner. I would do as you planned, offer £175k and dont go a penny higher. In fact, first check to see what other houses are going for in that road and make sure you arent going over the top bearing in mind the current market and go in even lower than 175.

ad9898_3

I'm afraid you have no chance of purchasing a 200k house with a 10k deposit.

hethmar

Oh well spotted ad, didnt take that in. No Im afraid that £10k is unlikely to be an acceptable deposit nowdays. But you are seeing a broker, so he will hopefully explain what price range you should be looking at.

Airwolf1

Also, share some details about the property, eg, how many bedrooms, reception rooms, the area it is in etc. Be specific, as you can get good comparables from www.rightmove.co.uk and you'll hopefully get an idea of what you should be paying once you've realised how much you can borrow.

poppysarah

Your income of 60k for a 180k mortgage should mean you've got a hefty deposit saved but you appear to only have 10k.

Explain why your income supports such a large mortgage but not saving for a deposit?

tuggy

Your deposit is just if not more important than your income.

With a £10k deposit you're looking at being lent £100,000 maximum

pinkshoes

If you could get it for £180k, you'd need AT LEAST a 10% deposit (so £18k), as well as a salary of at least £50k between you. Then you'd need £1800 for stamp duty, £1000 for solicitor, and perhaps £1000 moving costs.

So in reality, even to buy this at the lowest end of the price bracket, you'll need £22k CASH!!

Keep saving!

lisa-loves-cats

hi faerycakes,

i have exactly the same vague price range on a property i am interested in, is the agents marketing it by any chance ward & partners? they seem to do this, though i really am not completely sure why, it doesn't give you any idea as to what to actually offer.

The property I'm interested initially had a price range of £300-£350,000, I expressed a huge interest with the EA but told them I wasn't prepared to make an offer till I had sold my own property. A few weeks later they rang me to tell me that the vendor had dropped the asking price to offers over £308,000.... another vague asking price, which is was still higher the lowest price range figure????????????

The EA's still know that I really want the property and came back to me again to let me know that the vendor siad he woud be happy to accept an offer of £305,000....?

The figure I have in my head (at the moment) to offer is £275,000, I came to this by taking the middle figure of the initial price range at £325,000 and then reduced it by 15% which is the average drop in house prices at the moment. So your offer just under the stamp duty threshold sounds very releastic to me.

How long has it been on the market?
Has it been reduced at all?

If you post the link to the property here, those of us with property bee may be able to check the history for you.

Lisa x

ema_o

Hi faerycakes
The way your post reads it doesn't sound as if you have seen many properties, you are just looking at the asking price of the house and trying to work out what to offer based on that.
Working out what to offer is never easy but is more difficult at the moment due to low sales. When sales were high you could look at what was selling in the same area for what prices and work out what a similar house was worth. You could also look at nethouseprices and see the selling prices of houses a few months before. At the moment you can look at the asking price and deduct eg 15% but the trouble is you don't know how realistically the place was priced in the first place.

For example we spotted a place that was on for offers over £145 and bought it for £137. We compared it to the properties in the area (far nicer and lower priced to start with) and decided this was the right price.
However before the price was reduced (just before we saw it) it was on the market at £175. So if we had just calculated a % below asking price and offered that we would have probably paid far more than the price we eventually bought it at.
Take your time and see plenty of properties, I think the hardest part of buying was working out what to offer so don't rush just because you have fallen in love with this place - there will be other places you will fall in love with and this one might not sell for a while anyway giving you time to get your head around what the price should be.

PS Please don't shout at me for buying now, I did consider whether to or not very carefully and I am very happy with my decision.

dubsey

Lisa-loves-cats, are Ward and Partners all over the country now then? I thought they were only Kent and surrounding areas. I dread to think that they are now everywhere!

Yes - most of Ward and Partners properties are either Guide price (between two figures), or 'From'. They told us that the vendor is looking for an offer in the centre of the two amounts, so obviously on a guide price of £300-£350k, the vendor would be looking to achieve £325k. We looked at lots of houses with them (because at one time all their properties were guide prices) and when we asked they said the bottom guide price is to open the door to negotiations and it works extremely well . Maybe in a rising market, but I wouldn't have thought it would have the same relevance today, unless they are going to do the opposite - Guide price £350k this month, £300k next!