How to make offer to buy a house

Anjalicious

Hi there

I am a first time buyer and I have found a house I really like which is on at an asking price of 169,950.

The house is not considered to be the best street in the area so the estate agent tells me that if it were in a better area it would be another 20K at least. I'm taking this with a pinch of salt :rolleyes:

I have a good deposit, mortgage agreed in principle and as I am under no pressure to leave my current place (at home with the folks!) I can move as quickly as suits the vendors.

I would like to make an initial, low offer on the understanding that I think there is some negotiation to do. What do people feel would be a reasonable opening offer? I don't however want to insult the vendor by putting in too low an opening offer. I've heard that 10% below asking price is fair especially in a buyers market.

Interested to hear what you think , thanks so much
Anjali

Skyler

Hi Anjali,

if you have the address of the property you can check to see how much it was bought for on a site like houseprices.co.uk. You can also see what other houses have sold for in the area/street where the property is.

HTH

Anjalicious

Hi Skyler

Thanks. Just looked this up. The current owners bought 11 years ago for £44,500.....

The last house to sell in the same street was in December, a 4 bed detached for 200K

The street is quite varied with a big mix of houses so not really easy to benchmark. The last house to sell was in December 2008, a 4 bed detached for 205K. The last 3 bed semi to sell was in 2002 for 83K.

So difficult to gauge what is right!

ray123

Check the house price on either houseprices.co.uk or http://www.nethouseprices.com/.
Even if you dont have the address, you can find it:
1) http://postcode.royalmail.com/portal/rm/postcodefinder;jsessionid=NDDBGXL0DSV3CFB2IGJFEOQ;jsessionid=NDDBGXL0DSV3CFB2IGJFEOQ?catId=400145&gear=postcode - put the house no., street name and city in. This will give you the postcode.
2) Search on nethouseprices via the postcode and hopefully you will be able to locate the street and the property price paid.

ray123

You could start the negotiation at 150k.
Do you know how long the property has been on the market? How keen/desperate the seller?
If you start low, you can also increase the offer. Anyway, if you are living at home, the longer it takes to buy a home for yourself, the more you will be able to save.

Barneysmom

Maybe you could come it at £150k, thinking then of upping to £153, see how you get on?
I would advise a survey though, not the cheapo one.

The previous owners of our house lived here for 11 years and did no maintenance/upgrading whatsoever.
We had rose-coloured glasses on when we saw it and found when we moved in we didn't even have a kitchen drawer, and big crack on the bathroom floor you could put a book down, it was so wide.
We

Barneysmom

Maybe you could come it at £150k, thinking then of upping to £153, see how you get on?
I would advise a survey though, not the cheapo one.

The previous owners of our house lived here for 11 years and did no maintenance/upgrading whatsoever.
We had rose-coloured glasses on when we saw it and found when we moved in we didn't even have a kitchen drawer, and big crack on the bathroom floor you could put a book down, it was so wide.
We had to rip out the whole kitchen and bathroom and start again.

Good luck

Anjalicious

thanks for all the useful info!

The house has only been on the market for 3 weeks. The current owners did make a lot of improvements (extension to kitchen and utility) but there are some cosmetic jobs outstanding that I would need to do. As the house is quite old and its been a few years since the extension I'm definitely going to get a full survey if my offer is accepted.

Anjalicious

Just had some discussions here, and 150K feels right for an opening offer.

Any thoughts on how best to make the offer (sorry this is the first time i've done this!!). I have the vendor's telephone number (which they gave to me), is it worth approaching them directly with the offer or going through the agent?

Also is a verbal offer okay or do I need to make it in writing to ensure that legally everything is covered?

Any thoughts very welcome!

pawpurrs

Just ring the Agent.

cherry76

How much are you prepared to pay for it? I started my offer with a house I like by 20k less than the asking price and got it at 5% less than asking price. 150k is a good starting point if you want to get it for 155k or less.