New build offer

Kanga22

Hi,

This is fairly long so please bear with me. My boyfriend and I are looking at buying a 2 bed apartment together. We've found a completed new build apartment (one of 5 remaining out of 40). They have been on sale since mid 2009. The thing is we visited the property 2 weeks apart and have price sheets that vary by £2000.

The apartment we are interested in is the ground floor sales office which is has carpets to the rooms and completed bathrooms and kitchen. The original price list would have given a price of £136,500 (it's not actually written down as it's not ready for moving in yet.. they need to sell the others first, I calculated the price based on the amount the other apartments increased with floors.. e.g. between 2nd and 3rd floor there is a £2,000 increase.. so working down would be -£2,000 each floor).

However, the second price list would make the sales office apartment £138,500.. but due to carpets and better kitchen and bathroom finishes they said it was £140,000. But if we went for full ownership vs. shared they would give us a 5% discount making it £133,000. My mum went in to have a look around and mentioned we had seen the apartments had been £127,000 before any discounts just a few months ago and after much debate they said the lowest they could go was £131,000 (incl. previous discount, so only £2,000 less than what we had saturday.

So now, my question is... do I make a lower offer? How low? I don't feel the property has increased in value by £10,000 (assuming 5% discount on £127,000 price a few months back) in such a short time. But I am getting a lot of stick to settle for this new offer... I just dont know. The only threads I seems to find re. making a lower offer are from back in 2008, how much have things changed?

Thanks for any help!

TastyTeeth

Kanga22 wrote: »

Hi,

This is fairly long so please bear with me. My boyfriend and I are looking at buying a 2 bed apartment together. We've found a completed new build apartment (one of 5 remaining out of 40). They have been on sale since mid 2009. The thing is we visited the property 2 weeks apart and have price sheets that vary by £2000.

The apartment we are interested in is the ground floor sales office which is has carpets to the rooms and completed bathrooms and kitchen. The original price list would have given a price of £136,500 (it's not actually written down as it's not ready for moving in yet.. they need to sell the others first, I calculated the price based on the amount the other apartments increased with floors.. e.g. between 2nd and 3rd floor there is a £2,000 increase.. so working down would be -£2,000 each floor).

However, the second price list would make the sales office apartment £138,500.. but due to carpets and better kitchen and bathroom finishes they said it was £140,000. But if we went for full ownership vs. shared they would give us a 5% discount making it £133,000. My mum went in to have a look around and mentioned we had seen the apartments had been £127,000 before any discounts just a few months ago and after much debate they said the lowest they could go was £131,000 (incl. previous discount, so only £2,000 less than what we had saturday.

So now, my question is... do I make a lower offer? How low? I don't feel the property has increased in value by £10,000 (assuming 5% discount on £127,000 price a few months back) in such a short time. But I am getting a lot of stick to settle for this new offer... I just dont know. The only threads I seems to find re. making a lower offer are from back in 2008, how much have things changed?

Thanks for any help!

Forget the sales patter, offer 15% under the asking price. Given today's market it's realistic frankly. Forget the carpets and the upgraded bathroom, a valuer will not look at this.

The agent will not like it, but a period of further negotiation should see you pay around £125,000.

Give it a try, you've got nothing to lose.