Help Needed - Final stage of house price negotiation

Bibliophile_2 · 29 June 2009 at 5:27PM

We have spent the last couple of weeks trying to negotiate on buying a house and have just had news that our "final offer" isn't quite enough, and they would like an extra £2500 to seal the deal, so that they can buy the property they want. Not much money in the scheme of things, I know, but then that works both ways.

The house was put on sale in August last year for £425,000 and was massively overpriced in our opinion.

They reduced it to £375,000 in the Spring of this year.

After finally selling our house, we put in an opening offer of £330,000. We then upped it to £340,000, then following advice from this website to make small increases in your offers we agreed to increase it to £343,000 and after much tooing and foro-ing our final offer was put down as £345,000.

We really like the house and my heart is telling me to meet their price, but my head is telling me that we put in a final offer, and we should stick with it.

Your opinions and advice would be much appreciated.

pizzagirl · 29 June 2009 at 6:04PM

Bibliophile wrote: »

and they would like an extra £2500 to seal the deal, so that they can buy the property they want. .

What's that got to do with you?

Shouldn't they be approaching the vendor of the house they want to buy and start negotiating with them?

Treadmill · 29 June 2009 at 6:40PM

Personally I'd kick in the extra 2.5K, thats a very small perecentage of the price, thats just me though.

Gwhiz · 29 June 2009 at 6:45PM

pizzagirl wrote: »

What's that got to do with you? Shouldn't they be approaching the vendor of the house they want to buy and start negotiating with them?

Agreed. Or do what I did and get the vendor to get his EA to reduce their commission so the vendor can accept a lesser offer and still afford the house. At 345K the EA is making around £4K so why not say you put in extra £1K, EA agrees £500 and the vendor only needs to find £1K to move on.

Any good deal should have all sides feeling like winners!

Bibliophile_2 · 29 June 2009 at 6:50PM

Thanks.

The sellers said they have spoken to the owners of the house they're buying and have got the price as low as they can, but need the £2500 to make up the shortfall.

Gwhiz · 29 June 2009 at 6:55PM

Bibliophile wrote: »

Thanks.

The sellers said they have spoken to the owners of the house they're buying and have got the price as low as they can, but need the £2500 to make up the shortfall.

If they cannot buy a house due to a £2500 shortfall I'd say they should not go through with it as they are obviously at the limit of affordability.

Of course they could be lying and just want more money and think you'll stump up

ciano125 · 29 June 2009 at 7:57PM

The fact that they want to spend more money than they have does not make the house you are buying worth any more. Tell them that's your limit and if they cant accept it then you'll have to walk away. Stand firm, they'll accept it, I've no doubt about it. :beer:

Bibliophile_2 · 30 June 2009 at 1:08PM

Thanks for all your advice.

I've stuck to my guns and left the final offer on the table for a further 24 hours.

Hope I was right

JayZed · 30 June 2009 at 1:37PM

Good for you.

Doozergirl · 30 June 2009 at 1:59PM

Over £2500? I hope it's worth it! You've already battered them down, I have to say that I'd stretch that much for the right house, especially considering how far they've come down, even from the revised price.

warehouse · 30 June 2009 at 2:15PM

£2500 is less than 1% of the total already offered, UNDER 1 PERCENT. Ring them up now and tell them to go for it. To risk losing something you "really like" for less than 1% is utter madness in my opinion.