FTB offer advice - How much?

Red_Rocket

Hi all,

I was just wondering what would be a good first offer to put in on a property i am keen on.

The asking price is £120k, but looking online at previous sales a house on the same road went in 2004 for £74,000. There are no obvoius differences between the properties.

I realise that the market has changed significantly since then, but that is the last sale I can find.

Can anyone give me an idea of what would be a reasonable first offer?

Cheers.

CB1979_2

I was in a similar position, but my flat's asking price was £185k.

I got my mortgage in principle all sorted out, and basically said as long as there are no hiccups and depending on waiting time for searches to come back, i could move within 10 weeks.

this resulted in me getting the price of £169k as they had found somewhere and the only other people interested were involved in a chain. So i got a good price, but originally offered £165k and then i made out i managed to scrape together the other £4k from my parents, but couldn't go up anymore.

if it were me I'd go in at about £108k, see what they say. If they ask you to raise it slightly then you can go up to £110k, but personally would make out you haven't got endless funds.

but all said and done, depends completely on your circumstances and how many other people are interested, and then let the EA's make up loads of BS "offers" as well! lol

good luck

cupid_s

there is a website you can go to where you type the value of the property at a known date, then type the area and it tells you what it should be worth now.

2004 was quite near the peak of the house increases so a rise of 60% in that time seems ridiculous.

Have a search on google to see if you can find the site. It is possible that the buyers are just asking too much. But if pople are willing to pay that much you might have to also

Red_Rocket

...but the only ones i've found are those where you have to pay for them to calculate the current value.

Any more info you could give about the site you used?

And any more advice on what price to offer anybody?

dccarm

Why not ask a surveyor to do a valuation survey? It should only cost about £100. If it saves you thousands it would be well worth the cost.

cupid_s

hi there
not sure if this is the one i used but they're pretty much the same
http://www.hbosplc.com/economy/housepricecalculator.asp

if you did put an offer in, then it turned out a valuation relvealed it was worth less then you could withdraw the offer. remember the condition of the other house may have meant it was priced lower.
if you do like the place offer about 108-110 as suggested and a survey will show the value anyway

kiwichick

How long has it been on the market? Can be a good indicator of how much you can try to knock off. We never checked with the agent when we bought our house 3 months ago, reckon we could have saved a tidy sum too. The house had been on for over a year and had already dropped from £210k to £198k, we offered £187500 and got it for £192k. Had we known how long it had been on for we would have pushed a harder bargain as they were sick of waiting.