first offers!!!! estate agents.

Snow_Dog

Its all about the art of negotiating, the vendor has put their marker down in the sand with advice from the EA.

Your first offer is your start point, gradually the negotiation works its way to a value between the two.

Bearing in mind most people only do this a couple of times in their lives its understandable if you are nervous or put off by the EA or by their responses.

Always remember THE EA IS A SALESMAN, HE DOES THIS EVERY DAY, dont let them intimidate you because some of them will try. He is not your friend, he wants a sale, and you can use this because as LR has pointed out, a few K difference on the sale makes little difference to the commission.

Stick to your guns and I dont think offering £105K on a £124K property as your start point ridiculous, it depends on the market conditions, split the difference gives £115K which is about 8% down on asking price which in a stagnant market area would be about right.

If the area was booming however then its a different story.

space_rider

I put in an offer which was £7000 less than asking price. It was refused so I went up by £2000 but the vendor wanted asking price because alot of interest was shown. I gave him my top offer and he refused. I then looked at more houses and put in an offer on another one which was accepted. A week later got a call to say he would accept my top offer. I said no.It is still up for sale 3 weeks later. It`s a buyers market. I was keen to sell my house and I accepted an offer of 5,000 below asking price but that was the amount the estate agent said I could achieve.

franklee

linlin wrote:

Anything you like really, but insist on direct contact with the vendor and that a decision on your increased offer be made within x days/hours!

This is incredibly bad advice. There are many vendors that could not meet such a short deadline and imposing an arbitrarily short one will just annoy. We had a twerp do this to us for a probate sale, the offer was subject to a deadline reply of 4 days. By the time it got from the solicitor to us one of the parties had gone away for two days so the deadline was automatically missed. The potential buyer was then made to look a fool by having to come crawling back the next week to get our answer.

Insisting on direct contact is bad advice too, the vendor has chosen the EA and presumably prefers to go through them. A polite request is the most you should do.

linlin_3

franklee wrote:

This is incredibly bad advice. There are many vendors that could not meet such a short deadline and imposing an arbitrarily short one will just annoy. We had a twerp do this to us for a probate sale, the offer was subject to a deadline reply of 4 days. By the time it got from the solicitor to us one of the parties had gone away for two days so the deadline was automatically missed. The potential buyer was then made to look a fool by having to come crawling back the next week to get our answer.

Insisting on direct contact is bad advice too, the vendor has chosen the EA and presumably prefers to go through them. A polite request is the most you should do.

I have to disagree. We lost the house of our choice, despite waiting over three months, because the agent really didn't know what they were doing. Had we spoken direct to the vendor we would have had a better opportunity to ascertain the truth. There was nothing in my post to suggest short deadlines - whatever the deadline, a purchaser is more likely to to reach an amicable conclusion by dealing direct. The vendor has chosen the EA to market the house and negotiate a selling price, not necessarily to agree the finer details of timescale and communication of possible conveyancing problems.

humanbeing_2

lost_but_looking wrote:

but they can not treat people like crap nor can they act in such a mannor to the extent of being totally rude. surely not all agents are the same and obviously i have a bad one but come on, there is no excuss for treating people badly.

Youre wrong, 90% of estate agents are crap and totally rude, (after you have signed on with them that is.) the valuers are strangely very polite and helpful.

humanbeing_2

linlin wrote:

I have to disagree. We lost the house of our choice, despite waiting over three months, because the agent really didn't know what they were doing. Had we spoken direct to the vendor we would have had a better opportunity to ascertain the truth. There was nothing in my post to suggest short deadlines - whatever the deadline, a purchaser is more likely to to reach an amicable conclusion by dealing direct. The vendor has chosen the EA to market the house and negotiate a selling price, not necessarily to agree the finer details of timescale and communication of possible conveyancing problems.

I agree, any time ive sold ive been messed about by estate agents and ended up in direct contact with the buyer and its surprising how easy it makes it, youre both after the same thing after all and know exactly whats going on. Its easy to make assumptions during the process that your buyer / seller is holding things up when more often than not the hold up is because the estate agents or solicitors were not capable of passing a message on.

courtjester

quote>>I agree, any time ive sold ive been messed about by estate agents and ended up in direct contact with the buyer and its surprising how easy it makes it,..<<

So why not avoid the agent to start with and just sell yourself? - this is one of many benefits of selling privately. Good online property websites for private sellers have been around for years and it's highly viable now to sell direct, yet still people insist on using estate agents that they hate using (9/10 clients don't trust their agent according to the recent survey by WHICH?)...:cool:

franklee

linlin wrote:

.Had we spoken direct to the vendor we would have had a better opportunity to ascertain the truth. There was nothing in my post to suggest short deadlines - whatever the deadline, a purchaser is more likely to to reach an amicable conclusion by dealing direct.

You said "but insist on direct contact with the vendor and that a decision on your increased offer be made within x days/hours" which is short, giving a deadline in terms of hours implies less than a day or two to me which is ridiculous. Even several days is too short if the vendor is reliant on others. As for talking to the vendor, fine if you are polite and they agree but your post was full of insist this, insist that, make conditions, which isn't the best way to go about a successful negotiation. The best way is to make your own case strong by giving details about your position, that you can move fast, are a cash buyer or are already the top of a complete short chain with mortgage in place.

linlin_3

As has been said before, an EA's work is negotation, some of which can be long-drawn out and not necessarily polite - it's a time when a prospective purchaser will be waiting anxiously for a reply to their offer. When a prospective purchaser is ready to make an offer, all they want to know is whether the offer has been accepted or rejected. EA's are often out on calls, away from the office etc etc, but if your number one condition is that a decision is made within x hours, then at least you know! Of course, you'll tell the EA all the details of your position, that's pretty fundamental to the offer.
Once you know if your offer has been accepted you can deal with further issues ......like agreeing timescale etc.....unless you make that a condition as well. By including the condition to have a decision made within x hours/days, you negate some of the initial time-delaying excuses made by many EA's.

Acc72

I can only form an opinion on my personal experience with Estate Agents.

I also found them to be very rude and unwilling to pass an offer to the vendor.

In the end I spoke with the vendor directly and we came to an agreement - the EA was not happy.

I have found that EA's appear to have some super knowledge and training but this is not true - they are just selling a product (it could be tins of beans).

The offer that gets you the house is the one that the vendor accepts - therefore why not start low-ish in your negotiations ??