Buying a house - bargaining power

RenovationMan

mcc100 wrote: »

It all depends on the circumstances of the seller. A guy I know had gone through a messy divorce and ended up selling his house valued at 150k for 115k because he was desperate to sell.

Is that what happened to you? No wonder you're so bitter.

mcc100

RenovationMan wrote: »

Is that what happened to you? No wonder you're so bitter.

I was replying to a post from girl_withno_name .... what is bitter about that?

Why hijack a thread with an idiotic comment ?

RenovationMan

mcc100 wrote: »

I was replying to a post from girl_withno_name .... what is bitter about that?

Why hijack a thread with an idiotic comment ?

Just following your example. Seems you can dish it out but not take it.

tuftyclub

also a good idea is to find out what they paid for it. If they bought it for 10 years ago at half the price - they are more likely to take the hit of a low offer that someone that paid a lot in 2007. Also use property bee to view reductions - lots of reductions means that they are keener to sell.

good luck- I may be in a similar place soon

somethingcorporate

I agree with the above poster, rather than manually saving properties to check in 6 months time if you use a plugin called PropertyBee (google it) in Firefox as the browser (Google that too if you need to download it) it will automatically give you the history of that property with that agent. This includes changes to price, when it was first on the market, changes to wording etc. It's really, really useful!

We stopped offering on a house when we realised that a seller was clearly deluded and lying to our face when we could see the property history online, You would really be surprised by the number of properties that a) have been for sale for a long time (2+ years) and the number that actually INCREASE their asking price!

hcb42

I am looking to downsize and want to be under the £250K threshhold, although for the right house etc we can go higher. (but that sort of defeats the object)

I tend to look at about £270-280K downwards, as a guideline.

co123456

Information - that's what you need to increase your power when negotiating. A macro review of the local property market using sold prices, Propertybee, unsold prices, time on the market, every single piece of information you can get your hands on. Try and pick a time when the vendor will be in and possibly spill the beans on why they need/want to sell. Keep your ears open when speaking with the estate agent - they too can let slip. Keep in mind also that you'll need to show the vendor that you are good for the money. A clean credit record and a decision in principle from your mortgage company up front are handy things to have.