EA wants to qualify me before passing on any offer

housesitter

Yes. But my attitude towards how much I am willing to pay is probably at odds with the EA's attitude of how much I can afford to. So they will likely be wanting to encourage me to go higher in order to satisfy their client once then know I'm only spending under 40% of my salary on servicing the mortgage I wish to go for.
Plus I intend to make an offer well below asking price.

I'm not dumb enough to fall for their encouragement, but I'm sure they'd be dumb enough to try it.

Hectors_House wrote: »

They turned out to be way more expensive on everything so although we got a mortgage in principle with them when it came to our offer being accepted we went elsewhere for everything.

The way we looked at it was that it was no great deal to play along with them if it was the only way we'd get to view the place.

A superb idea. It's sneeky. I like it
So long as they don't need to do a credit check on me (I'm fine, but too many and all that) I could live with the idea.
I have a print off of my record from equifax I did on Monday which might save them the bother for simple figures.

Still cautious of telling them exact figures tho. There is of course alwasy the option to tell a few porkies whilst it's both unofficial and I have no intention of using them.
I know from elsewhere what I can and can't afford and what is being offered to me.

kunekune

The agents we have been dealing with tend to ask do we have anything to sell and then push their own financial adviser at us. I refuse, pointing out that the mortgage we can get (a staff one) is a better deal than any they can access. That's been a pain, because every single person I deal with tries it again. But I've managed to resist successfully, once I explain. I have not been asked to show them the offer in principle, or any details of our salaries, and would be reluctant to do so.

Of course, being an over-qualified purchaser doesn't help when the seller won't budge on price, LOL. We've made two offers this week, one at 85% asking price and one at 90% asking price, and neither vendor would even entertain the figure. They are both vendors who have 'dropped' their asking price but they don't appear to have dropped their expectation of what they're going to get. We continue to look ...

housesitter

I'll specifically targetting empty properties and looking at offer 20% below asking (of around 200K, 4bed detached) with the promise of fast completion, being a FTB.
It may take a while but someone will bite sooner or later.

Using previous sold prices as an indicator of how much they stand to loose from accepting gives me a rough idea of how a sensible person might view the offer.

It's going to take a while but I can wait.

kunekune

That's similar to what we're doing, except round here that won't get you detached. However, even the sellers of empty properties are not budging. We're also finding that in tightly held areas, the previous sold prices are not much help, there's not enough sales to go by, and because many four beds in our area are actually extended three beds, you can't tell whether a sold price is a true comparison.

We can wait too, but it's quite frustrating.

Richard_Webster

We have had one of these in our office this week where a young lady offered on one of our properties and she was up against another buyer. She refused to be offer checked as she had her broker. We put the offer forward but explained to the vendor that she wouldn't be offer checked, it was his decision to accept the buyer. 3 weeks later she has phoned up in tears because when the survey came back she discovered that the lender she has gone with won't lend on her property (flat above a shop) if she had come in and told me who she was using as a lender I could have told her that she couldn't use that lender and saved her the survey fee. I am now trying to save that sale.

Exactly - that's the point - a good estate agent will know that kind of thing. Presumably the seller was warned that flats above shops were more difficult to sell and he could well get naive buyers thinking they had a bargain, not realising it was a bargain because mortgages were more difficult....

haras_nosirrah

I don't understand why people are advising the OP to lie about his income and deposit. Surely if he has nothing to hide then he has no reason to lie. Just take in an aip and a recent payslip and have a 5 min chat - that is all you need to do.

The majority of the clients who won't be offer checked are because they are doing things like inflating income and these cases usually fall through.

The property that our young lady was buying was a three bed maisonette above a dr surgery on at the same price as a 1 bed in this area. She has now pulled out as she believes she cannot get a mortgage on it despite us giving her a list of 4 lenders who we know will lend as other purchasers have used them in these properties with no problems.

If she would have been offer checked then we could have saved it as her broker 300 miles away would not have known as much about the property as we do.

huntersc

haras_nosirrah wrote: »

Just take in an aip and a recent payslip and have a 5 min chat - that is all you need to do.

My payslip is my business and I'm certainly not giving that kind of information to a person who is, essentially, a complete stranger.

One EA even recently had the cheek to tell me I had to see their IFA even though I was a cash buyer. When I refused they wanted proof of the cash, "a bank statement would do" he said. Haha, yeah, okay. Want my credit card, pin number and !!!! size too? I told him to call my financial advisor if he wanted assurance that I could afford the property but that the EA would have to pay for the time and the cost of having a letter sent to them. Strangely enough they declined and put the offer forward to the vendor.

poppysarah

You should get a solicitor to look at your "cash" (statement or whatever) and just refer EA to them.

(As part of the conveyancing I'm sure someone said they'd do this for nowt)

puddy

as far as i can see the OP was not trying to inflate his income or buying power, i felt it was the opposite, he wants to play his cards close so that if the EA shows him something of 180 for example, he can say, well im only willing to go to 160 and the EA hasnt got in his mind 'i know hes got 180, i'll push him on it'

i have been honest with our EA, to say that i have an absolute max which would require me trying to borrow money from my parents, but our own max, which is guarentted is 20k less, then i can say that on discussion with my parents, they wont lend me the money for the prospective house, because they didnt think it was worth it, so my offer is x and thats that

Richard_Webster

as far as i can see the OP was not trying to inflate his income or buying power, i felt it was the opposite, he wants to play his cards close so that if the EA shows him something of 180 for example, he can say, well im only willing to go to 160 and the EA hasnt got in his mind 'i know hes got 180, i'll push him on it'

Yes, but the average savvy buyer just says "...there's something else I can get for £155K down the road so I'm not paying more than £160K even if I could afford to pay more. Does your seller want to sell or not?" So even if EA knows he coudl afford more buyers can still use this tactic.

You should get a solicitor to look at your "cash" (statement or whatever) and just refer EA to them.

(As part of the conveyancing I'm sure someone said they'd do this for nowt)

Yes, I have had clients ask me to do that so the EA didn't see their details but I could say that I had seen evidence that they could produce £X.