Haggling on a brand new home

wildjo_2

Just about to get into the bartering stage on a brand new house. The plot is great and the house is up to the final stages. Currently priced at £530 k what are the chance of getting for less than £500k to avoid extra stamp duty. What's the best way to get the price down. Any success stories / tachniques would be appreciated!

inmypocketnottheirs

Best way is to make an offer, stating that you like the house, you are serious (i.e. your house is already on the market) but the maximum you can go to is £495,000 and see what happens.

However, if the devlopment is popular and selling well, then prepare to be disaapointed. If you do have a proeprty to sell and do not even have it on the market, then I doubt you will get taken very seriously.

You could also try and negotiate a part exchange deal. Remember if you go down this route, it is not how much the new house costs, or how much they offer for your house the relevant fact is - how much does it cost to change? Then you also save on solicitors and estate agents fees.

Jorgan_2

As has been said it depends what position you are in to proceed, how popular the development is, how many houses are left to sell on site, were the builder is in their financial year and whether its a stock plot, i.e. one that is built rather than a patch of mud or footings coming out of the ground.

If you are in a good position, i.e. sold stc or no chain & can complete within a set time frame you may get a very good discount. If you are in this position, ask the builder to come back to you with the best sale price they have on the proeprty you are interested in. Don't forget to mention that you are also waiting on another builder to get back to you with regards to one of their plots.

I recently heard of a buyer getting a property with an asking price of £565k for £450k because he had no chain could complete within 5 weeks & it was 6 weeks to the end of the builders financial year.

Dead_Eye_Jones

In my experience its probably worth getting the price down a bit to ensure you dont lose out when coming to sell. Whilst looking earlier in the year it was clear that owners of 3-4 yr old 'new build' houses were asking for more money than average, simply because they paid a premium that time ago and were expecting a nice rise too.

Of course now they are competing with real new build houses fresh off the plan with all the incentives, and obviously older character poperties too. What struck me was the size difference between the Georgian mordernised houses and the nearly new builds being sold on by the 1st owners at often 10-20% more. The latter feeling so much smaller with poor storage consideration, there was really no contest and we refused to look at recent builds further.

I think the problem is buyers get sucked in by slick marketing and the 'new' feel, eg swish modern bathroom/kitchen/ensuite etc and its only once you are in that you realise its actually much smaller than the show home looked (funny that ). Having been the 1st in new build rental properties befor this is a lesson i learnt the easy way! When you come to sell the property on, it nolonger has the benefit of being new and it becomes hard to make much on it. You just wont have the same selling power.

Therefore get it as cheap as poss, when peeps start all moving on at te same time youll be able to undercut and still be comfortable....