putting in offers

jam5t3r

Hi All, this is my first post. Firstly I would like to say that I've been reading a lot of the posts and advice provided here and have learnt a huge amount in the last few days so thanks to everyone that's helped so far.

I'm currently about to buy my first house, although my partner is not a FTB and has a place that she's about to put on the market. We have started looking and (possibly unfortunately) have found a place that we really like while we are not proceedable. We had been planning on selling her place as fast as possible and making on offer ASAP. After reading the advice here we have decided not to do that and are now being more sensible about the procese. We will first get a decent offer on my partners place then make offers on places we like.

I do have a few questions, lets assume the 2 places we like at the moment are still available when we are proceedable...

Property 1: We really like this place, it was on for £240k, then reduced to £235, had a sale agreed but the buyer withdrew and its back on the market at £235. Is this a common thing for agents to do in order to get more interest, mark it as sold then put it back on the market, or is this likely to be a genuine event? I think the property is a little overpriced and was thinking of a startting offer of £215 or £210, we would be prepared to pay the full asking price should we need to but would like to secure it for something around £225.

Property 2: We are also interested in another place that's listed at £285 and has been on the market for 2 months with no price reductions. Could anyone recommend a strategy for this one? We aren't going to pay more than £250 so there is a very good change we are not going to have any of our offers accepted. I was thinking of offering £240 then eaking it out with small odd raises like and extra £1235 and give the impression that we are scrimping every last penny to increase our offer up to £250.

I look forward to any advice.

Thanks
Jamie