'Offers in Excess of'

cat456

Hi everyone

We are currently looking to buy and have noticed that many houses are now being priced 'O.I.E'. We have seen a property we like at O.I.E. £149k and decided to put an offer on at £150k. The Estate Agent told us that someone had already put an offer in at £155k which hadn't been accepted. We have put in a final offer of £157k because we really love the house but feel that paying any more than this would be silly when compared to local house prices.

Has anyone else come across this method of pricing, as it appears to me to be a way of trying to keep prices high.

Need_More_Money_2

cat456 wrote:

Hi everyone

We are currently looking to buy and have noticed that many houses are now being priced 'O.I.E'. We have seen a property we like at O.I.E. £149k and decided to put an offer on at £150k. The Estate Agent told us that someone had already put an offer in at £155k which hadn't been accepted. We have put in a final offer of £157k because we really love the house but feel that paying any more than this would be silly when compared to local house prices.

Has anyone else come across this method of pricing, as it appears to me to be a way of trying to keep prices high.

It's common is Scotland (but referred to as Offers over) but I think it is usual for the offers to be sealed and all opened together, so you don't know what other offers have been made. Do you know that the EA is telling the truth when he says those higher offers were made, or is it just BS to get you to up your offer?

safesound

We sold our house this way last year. It was a unique property in that it had allot of potential and *allot* of land for where it was located, and as such the EA couldnt really put a price on it. It went on the market as Offers Over 150K and ended up selling for 159K to a local developer (he lived about ten doors down on the same road). The EA said to wait a minimum period of time before looking at the most proceedable offer, in our case I think we waited six weeks. During this time we had four offers with the developer being the highest with the best chance of proceeding.
On a personal note, I'd probably drop a confirmation of the offer into the vendor just to be sure they were passing on all offers and not filtering them but I'm paranoid by nature so maybe a little overcautious

Tassotti

'Offers over' works in Scotland. This is the way the housing market works up there.

Personally, down south, it shows me that this is the minimum price a vendor will accept for their property.

This 'minimum price' is debatable and I think if I were a seller (and I have been), I would tell the agent to go forth and multiply with this type of marketing.

Compare other similar properties, check selling prices (nethouseprices.co.uk, or others)to get a true value, then offer on your own research.

Best of luck

Tass