Negotiating a sale

fivemice

How many times did you have to go back to the vendor with an offer?

Our first offer was £122K on a £136K house that has been on the market for 4 months with very little interest and no other offers and requires a lot of plastering work.

I know we are supposed to go back in increments of £500-£1K, but surely that would take aaaaaaaages?

Just looking for reassurance really, never done this before

cattie

To be honest I couldn't be doing with all that mucking about with piddling increments of £500. And as a vendor it would really irritate me.

On a house with a market value of 136k I expect they are looking for figure around 132-133k. I know if it were me selling & I knew the house hadn't been overpriced & I was really desperate my bottom line would be 130k.

Have you asked the ea if they know what the mininum is the vendors are hoping to achieve? I always tell my ea that I wont consider offers under a certain amount as I don't want to be bothered with silly offers & like prospective buyers to know where they stand from the start. So have a word with the ea before proceeding.

Sometimes when making an offer you need to use a bit of psychology & instead of making it a round figure, such as 127k, make an offer something like £127, 337 which sounds an awful lot more, but in reality isn't.

fivemice

I'm pretty sure it is overpriced.
Next door is 4 beds instead of three, and it has got a conservatory and is on for £129K. It certainly needs more decorative work, but not £8Ks worth.

Also, the market round here is absolutely dead. The EA has already told us that there is no way he can expect to get the full asking price.

When our first offer of £122K got rejected we asked but the EA just said "closer to the asking price", which means nothing really.

Thanks for your advice

cwcw

After our viewing, we rang up the following Monday to make an offer. There were already 2 asking price offers on the table and the bidding was going to "best and final" sealed bids by the Wednesday. We based our final offer on what we'd be willing to go up to if we got into a bidding war. It worked because we won, although with hindsight I can't help but feel we could've got away with a couple of grand less, but that's the nature of sealed bids (and it is usual practice in Sheffield too).