How Much Should We Offer? (FTB)

Adrian8

Hi,
At the end of the day any house that needs work on it combined with the fact that you and your partner are first time buyers, any surveyor would tell you to go for a new property. I LIKE THAT ADVICE AS IT MEANS on your days off your not doing diy (unless you have a trades background)
Ady

fivemice

Adrian8 wrote:

Hi,
At the end of the day any house that needs work on it combined with the fact that you and your partner are first time buyers, any surveyor would tell you to go for a new property. I LIKE THAT ADVICE AS IT MEANS on your days off your not doing diy (unless you have a trades background)
Ady

Surely that's personal choice?
And why would a surveyor be telling a buyer what to buy?

Doozergirl

Adrian8 wrote:

At the end of the day any house that needs work on it combined with the fact that you and your partner are first time buyers, any surveyor would tell you to go for a new property. I LIKE THAT ADVICE AS IT MEANS on your days off your not doing diy (unless you have a trades background)

I can't imagine anyone saying such a thing other than a lay person. New builds snag and you pay a big developer's premium. Some people like DIY or can see the potential in a property! I love the prospect of choosing my own kitchen!

OP, I would have suggested that you view as many houses as you can before making an offer. It gives you an idea of what houses are going for and how the one you are interested in measures up.

It's highly unlikely that the vendor would accept any offers before asking you again. They want best price and, really, bidding wars don't happen that often. It's unlikely that anyone is bidding at the same time as you. I can honestly say that I've only been involved in one and I've invited one too and I've turned over a lot of property!

Offering should be about what you think it is worth, setting that as your top price and starting a heck of a lot lower. Never make subsequent offers in the same phonecall as being turned down and try to leave at least a day, if not more, between offers. It's stressful for almost anymore, let alone a FTB, but if you consider that your vendors will be nearly as nervous as you and that every £1000 you can knock off is worth, well, how many days do you need to work to earn £1000? You'll be paying back twice that in interest aswell!

pingu79

Adrian8 wrote:

Hi,
At the end of the day any house that needs work on it combined with the fact that you and your partner are first time buyers, any surveyor would tell you to go for a new property. I LIKE THAT ADVICE AS IT MEANS on your days off your not doing diy (unless you have a trades background)
Ady

Surely it depends on the amount of work and whether it is something cosmetic or structural? New houses tend to be pricey and often your getting much less house/garden for your money than an older property. My OH is a structural engineer and my dad a site manager, they both feel that a lot of these new builds are done to poor standards and i'd be suprised if some of them last 100 years.

We are also FTB and seen a couple that were considering offering on. Echo others advice of starting low and be warned that EA's can try and push you to up your offer so try to hang fire rather than be bullied to raising it too much to soon. Its easy to forget that the EA is after a bigger cut. On our last offer the EA really harassed us to up our offer, they kept calling and annoyed me so much i felt like telling them its £x or were off. As it was OH was being calm so just gave the extra £1k to get accepted.

Do you know this area well and have you already viewed this house to see if it all looks well maintained and boiler etc is in good nick?

Also when you go to a mortgage advisor and its independent (yet attached to an EA) make sure its not in the area your looking in. We stupidly did this, broker was good but then we found house and was on with the attached EA. Get your mortgage in pricinple sorted too, broker estimated we could borrow about 10k over what eventual mortgage co were willing to give. It will also bring to light hopefully if they are any credit issues, we didn't expect to have a problem but did.

New_to_Budgeting

Thanks all and we are taking all your advice on board. (Apart from the new build bit as we deffo want something older)

Will keep you updated and will consider looking at other properties too for comparison purposes.

djm1972

Just a note on negotiating. I've read that a lot of people come out of a negotiating process feeling like they've "been had" or got a raw deal.

I'm going through this process at the moment. The way i'm looking at is that I since I am not a professional negotiator I am going to lose. I've set a maximum that I am prepared to pay, and I fully expect the estate agent to use their skills as a negotiator to work out what that is and get me to pay it (assuming that the vendor is prepared to come down to that amount).

Negotiating is a skill that has to be learnt, so there's no way that most of us who perhaps try and negotiate seriously maybe once or twice in our lives are going to beat someone who's job it is. You wouldn't expect to beat a professional boxer, so why expect to beat a professional negotiator?

Well that's how I see it! Work out how much you're prepared to pay, try going in a bit lower, let the estate agent do their job and walk away if the vendor won't accept what you're prepared to pay.

Good luck!