First time buyer nerves!

Chinkle

What do you know about the vendor. Sounds like it could be someone who's lived there forever, probably hasn't noticed his/her house isn't up to modern standards, has no clue about the current housing market and maybe doesn't really want to move out but is being forced to by circumstances (ie to old to cope on their own).

Or has he/she already died/moved - perhaps its some greed relatives wanting top dollar.

Be very careful about offering anything more, as renovation prices only ever escalate, in fact in my opinion walk away. Go see other properties - if you can't find anything my bet is this house will still be on the market in several months time. Then go back in with an offer even lower than your first one.

LunaKamelia

Thank you all for your encouraging input!! Brit1234, will definitely take your advice and see how we go, if in fact we do give them our last offer. QTpie, congrats on new house and good luck. With regards to the owner of the property, it used to be a family home where one of the sons ended up living in and later on died. It is now his elderly brother/family that want to sell the house, and I must say that I use the term "family" very loosely as they let the poor guy live in absolute squalor in what is considered a very nice area. Am seriously trying hard not to be emotional about this house hunting business, but it is incredibly hard. Especially when the estate agents come accross as not really bothered about whether you put in a new offer or not and them being quite casual about moving on to another property. Another problem i've noticed is that there are not enough properties on the market?

tawse57

All sales people - and Estate Agents are sales people dependent upon commission - practice not being interested in your offer.

If you go and read the forums on housepricecrash.co.uk you will read about how desperate many estate agents are.

IMPO, they are only going to get more desperate, along with more and more desperate sellers, as the public sector job cuts begin, as people stop spending, as the banks dramatically reduce the amount of money being lent for mortgages and, possibly, with sudden interest rate rises in the coming 12 months.

The country is in a mess economy. Sellers are flooding the housing market but the numbers of people looking to buy are falling.

It is increasingly a buyers' market.

Why not leave it till the Autumn and go back in with an even lower offer?

Smallfries

is this the only house you have viewed with the estate agent? i was in a position where we viewed a house and the GF made it very clear she wanted it in front of the estate agent. when we got home i just mentioned to her how easy we made his job and now he knows how much she wants it he can advise the seller to hold on for a better offer as he can be sure we will go higher. what we decided to do then is go and view another one and both said we loved it more than the first, knowing that the position that the first seller was keen to sell as it was his dads house and he had died. i then put an offer in for the first and said if he doesnt accept this then i will go for the other one. the estate agent said he wont take less than £75k and i had offered £68k but EA would tell him and let me know. 15 mins later i got a call to say that if i made it 69k then it was a done deal, when i went in EA this morning he told me how worried the seller was that i would go elsewhere that he had no option to sell, he was open about the fact that he thought he could get the full asking on the basis that GF was so keen and the power of the woman is much more than people think

Eric1

Smallfries wrote: »

he thought he could get the full asking on the basis that GF was so keen and the power of the woman is much more than people think

hear! hear! (sigh)

tawse57

Smallfries, I have seen women sitting in estate offices crying floods of tears telling the estate agent how the house is their dream house and how they must have it.

I once witnessed this with the EA on the phone supposedly to someone else who also wanted the same house and then watched this poor woman in the office basically bid herself up whilst listening to the EA talk to the supposed other buyer as the EA fed back the supposed higher bids. As Forest Gump said, stupid is as stupid is.

Frankly, from a pure happiness POV for the man for the rest of his life, if a man is in a relationship with a woman who acts like that over a house then, IMPO, the man needs to read the below site more than an estate agent.

http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/a-shrink-for-men-index/

Bananamana

tawse57 wrote: »

As Forest Gump said, stupid is as stupid does.

^^ apologies for the fix

D2007

Perhaps the reason the estate agent is trying to sell you other properties is because they may know the seller wont accept the offers you are making or think of the seller as a time waster. After all, the estate agent wants a sale so they can get their money, they have no benefit in putting you off a property you are interested in, in the hope you'll like others they have on the books.

tawse57

Bananamana wrote: »

^^ apologies for the fix

I knew someone would post the correct phrase - I just could not be bothered to google it.

Castleman

pardal51 wrote: »

I Don't up your offers they way you've done, i.e., full figures £8K than £3K. Go let's say from £234950 to £241283 to £243127.....Just to show that you are trying to scrape every single penny you can. Take your time, don't rush things as you may show a bit of desperation and this can be used against you when negotiating.

This is pretty stupid advice - most people have the common sense to offer to the nearest round number. They'll know you're playing games if you pretend that is every pound you can scrape together - there's no pretending that when you've got cash of around 250k, that you are limited to the nearest pound - maybe if you were collating a 5-10k deposit, but not for anything higher.