FTB - are we being paranoid or being messed around by the agents?

trv9865

I would ask to see the flat again and talk to the vendor, esp If you built up a good rapport! You'll probably find they are not aware of any offers & the agent is messing you about, trying to get you to go higher! The ifa would know what you can afford if you have a mortgage in principle. when we used an ifa for ours he told us we could borrow up to 230 when we only wanted 150!!!!! so he knows how high you can go! we are ftbs & were messed about. they tried to get us to bid more (which we did), but our offer still wasnt accepted, then we pulled out, 2 days later they rung up to say they are going for sealed bids & wanted to find out if we wanted to put forward our best & final offer ( & i told her where to stick her sealed bids) & guess what, the property had a sold sign up for 2 weeks & went straight back on the market again & it still is!!!
We've been searching since last October and fortunately we found another house last week which is 8 doors down the road from 1 we were gazumped on back in march (oh theres another story there where the ea messed us about BIG TIME) & now the battle with solicitors has started!! Its all so much fun & at 1 point i was just gonna give up & im so glad i didt!! my advice would to keep level headed, you've already gone over your budget, you shouldnt have to go any higher especially as you've only been looking for a month, I know what its like when you think you've found "the one" (I saw about 4 properties which I thought were "the one") so you're bound to find something else and it could be even better! as a ftb you are literally at the mercy of the ea, so dont let them bully you into going higher, be prepared to walk away! if you find out that the vendor is aware of your offers & has been refusing them, then I would steer well clear coz that shows that she wont even think twice about accepting a higher offer later on & you may have wasted money on surveys, etc!! that hurts even more and it hurts ur pocket too!!

Doozergirl

It isn't an agent that chooses to accept an offer. It is the vendor.

A vendor might think it's the agents job to get them the best price but you'll find that from an agent's point of view, their job is to find a sale. That means finding a price that is acceptable to both vendor and potential purchaser. You're a FTB but you will realise when you are a vendor that an agent who is good at their job will negotiate you down as hard as they are trying to negotiate buyers up.

So I think you're being paranoid. Asking price but with lease extension included is a sensible offer. The vendor will know about it. It's been rejected, that's her perogative. It's not mind games, it's a rejection...

FWIW, I don't care a jot if a mortgage advisor knows how much I can afford. I decide how much I want to pay for a property and no-one else. If I don't think it's worth what they're asking it doesn't matter if I've got £10 million sitting in the bank. You need to remember that yourself. Estate agents cannot manipulate those who aren't prepared to pay any more regardless of their spending power. The program about Foxtons knowing buying power from their IFA is where this theory comes from but it was about the agents showing buyers more expensive properties, it wasn't about pushing the price up beyond what a vendor will accept. As far as an agent is concerned, a sale is a sale is a sale. £5000 extra for the vendor is £50-100 more for the EA firm on £2-4000 commission. It's not even worth it to them to try. But it is worth pushing a buyer harder to bring them up to what the vendor wants because the sale itself is worth thousands.

I'd love an agent that will push hard to get me more money than I'm prepared to accept but they don't really exist!

(Telling them you're interested in something else is the oldest game in the book, they've seen it, done it. If the vendor isn't interested, that sort of feedback won't make any difference - it's fair for an EA to expect that if you are in the market to buy and have just been rejected on your best offer that you might well be interested in buying a different house!)

jonewer

Doozergirl wrote: »

As far as an agent is concerned, a sale is a sale is a sale. £5000 extra for the vendor is £50-100 more for the EA firm on £2-4000 commission. It's not even worth it to them to try.

Oh for heavens sake!

Look, if agents bump up every sale by £5k then they raise, sale by sale, the price of houses in the area.

So pretty soon its not just one sale for an extra £50-£100 commission its every sale for an extra £500-£1000 commission and rising.

Why cant people understand this?

pardal51

$$$ wrote: »

Walk away now (unless you really must have this one - in which case be prepared to pay whatever they think they can squeeze from you).

Never get emotionally engaged. You might find my previous negotiating post useful:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=34110397&postcount=9

Always remember that £200,000 pounds is a huge amount of money - and you will pay roughly double that as a mortgage.

Properly read up on it. This is probably the biggest financial transaction you'll ever make and the consequences will be with you for years.

Followed $$$ advice and bought Roger Dawson's book.

I believe that the market is in favour of buyers at the moment (I might be biased as I am a buyer). I have agreed with my OH that we cannot leave emotions take over and keep increasing offer (we haven't made one yet). Just for reference we told an EA that we are looking for a house of up to 250K. He asked: "is it the limit price you are looking for or is it how much money you have to spend?" Told it was the total amount we have - I know I shouldn't have told, but I was exactly trying to see his reaction, which was: He then said: " we can view properties with prices up to 265K". Therefore don't go by the asking price unless you are desperate for a property. There will always be properties coming to the market. Don't fall that easily.

Doozergirl

jonewer wrote: »

Oh for heavens sake!

Look, if agents bump up every sale by £5k then they raise, sale by sale, the price of houses in the area.

So pretty soon its not just one sale for an extra £50-£100 commission its every sale for an extra £500-£1000 commission and rising.

Why cant people understand this?

Because if that is genuinely the case then if people don't bite for that extra £5000 the agent knows they aren't going to make a penny.

That agent is working the vendor as hard as they are working this FTB. Overpriced property sitting there doing nothing does not bring home the bacon. If they aren't working the vendor then it means that they are confident that it will sell for that price and the OP is on a hiding to nothing anyway.

If the asking price is high and they sell for less, who cares really? It's just another house that looks like it sold for more than it did to the next buyer who has just called in and can't view it because it's under offer. Move on and sell the next one for a bit more instead.

Agents have to react to the market, it's the market that decides if a house is worth another £5000 or not. Great if it does, persuade the vendor to drop if it doesn't. The market is much more powerful than EAs. When prices were going backwards they had to adapt to the market and convince vendors to accept less. They don't direct the market. We know that every vendor thinks theirs is worth more than next door anyway, so they probably wanted to put it on for £10k more than number 3 and agents have to pander to their egos as well.

If the market isn't biting then 1.5% of something is a lot more than 1% of nothing. And what you really want is to be selling lots and lots at a sensible price than less at a higher price. Because that really does bring in the money, not the £50s or even the £500s. It's about turnover.

That's why 'people' like me don't understand. Your view is naive.

Bullfighter

Go back and offer £180k and tell the EA that your offer will drop by £5k every time the vendor tries to negotiate. This is a FALLING market.

jozbo

Just an update - EA got back to me today - a couple of days after the last offer was made - and said he was going to try a last hoorah with the vendors as he thought it was a good offer and they'd be stupid not to take it....suggested i start looking for a solicitor and gave me a number (though from advice here i'm guessing i shouldn't go with any EA-related solicitors?)

Fatenbread

jozbo wrote: »

Just an update - EA got back to me today - a couple of days after the last offer was made - and said he was going to try a last hoorah with the vendors as he thought it was a good offer and they'd be stupid not to take it....suggested i start looking for a solicitor and gave me a number (though from advice here i'm guessing i shouldn't go with any EA-related solicitors?)

You've offered the asking price (more than your original ceiling) and it has been turned down. Either the vendor is divorced from reality or you are being bilked.

Withdraw the offer and walk away. If they come back, tell them your maximum is £190k.

I would also walk away from the "agreed in principle mortgage" provided by the EA's in-house IFA (or more accurately, FA). If you are credit worthy you can go direct to a mortgage company or a truly independent IFA and then not be in a position where your financial situation is fully known by the agent (who is the vendor's agent).

Any negotiation is a game of poker, and you appear to be playing with your cards on show.

Fatenbread

And find your own solicitor. There is less risk that a solicitor will not be independent from the seller's EA, but conveyancing work at this level is so vanilla there is little differential in prices. You should be able to find a solicitor that does not charge any fees (other than disbursements) if the sale does not go through if you look hard enough.

poppysarah

Walk away.
Seriously there are other places to sell with more interested sellers.