Evaluating an opening offer.

slummymummyof3

Why don't you have an 'informal' chat with the EA and ask the vendors position?

Tony_R

Thanks for the advice so far.

I've just discovered mouseprice.com through here and thought i'd give that a go.

That gives an estimate for this property at £207,000 with an upper value of £227,000. Although this might not be taking into account the conservatory.

For comparison I checked the house which was recently under offer for just short of £250,000 (Friday just gone) to see what they was valued at by mouseprice and it gave £249,000.

nollag2006

Worth checking zoopla.com as well

hugheskevi

Yes it is a nice area. We are also first time buyers with a 20-25% deposit who both currently live with parents. They are still looking for their house to move on to, so we could happily wait till they are ready or go when they need us to. I presume that means we are in quite a good position?

Just a slight word of caution about this - I was in a similar position, and made an offer on a place which was accepted. But mortgage offers normally expire after 3 or 4 months, and surveys are likely to be valid for about 6 months (check that with mortgage provider as it will differ by provider).

In my purchase, 3 months after accepting the offer the vendors still hadn't made any move to buy a property, and wouldn't agree to any form of committment in terms of moving out by a particular date, even dates months ahead.

They had extremely particular preferences, and I could see I could get into a spiral of expiring mortgage offers and expiring surveys which would keep adding to the cost. And whilst I was in no hurry to move, I didn't want to sit around forever waiting for someone else to find their elusive dream property.

That ended with me withdrawing the offer and buying a house a few doors along the road, losing money on surveys (about £450) and a small amount on legal fees but definately happy with the decision.

franklee

If next door of the semi is the same except for the conservatory and sold in January 2009 for £177,000 then why are you willing to pay so much more? You can get a conservatory for 10K surely, so more likely to be "worth" circa £190K It's not as if it's all done up inside or anything.

OTOH a garage can be worth a lot more, say 20K? Put that with an extra storage room and being all done up and you see the other house may be "worth" considerably more, at a wild guess say 230K?

Obv don't know the area so am guessing here.

Or am I missing something (Apart from that fact that houses in general are overpriced that is).

Milliewilly

January 09 was pretty much the bottom of the market.

Could have been a repo - deceased estate etc.

I can't see why any EA would put the other side of a semi on at over £70K more than its other half sold for unless there are serious differences they would never get their comission.

I personally would not offer £200 on a £250K house unless I was paying cash.

If the slightly larger property went under offer very quickly at £250K then that tells you where the market is.

franklee

There are three sets of people the OP can ask about the price difference of next door. The estate agent, the vendors of the property for sale and the new neighbours next door who bagged at the lower price.

EAs often put properties on at a high price to bag the work and then if/when it doesn't sell talk the vendor down.

The other property has a garage and possibly a bigger plot to house it, making it worth more. Not to mention the cellar room and being in pristine condition. Besides who knows if that buyer overpaid or even what they paid