Offer rejected, ammend offer with fixture and fittings

englandcrew

Hi,

What is the "norm" when it comes to fixtures and fittings? I have just had a offer on a house I like rejected. I offered £160,000 and assumed that we would pay extra for any items of furniture they wanted to leave behind. The vendor is holding out for £165,000.

I was thinking of offering £165,000 and included in this price making sure ovens, sheds, curtain rails etc are included. So basically not paying any extra for fixture and fittings on top

Is this allowed? Do you think this makes it more attractive or will they be expecting money on top

DVardysShadow

englandcrew wrote: »

Is this allowed?

It is not expressly permitted, but neither is it forbidden.

A suggested way to negotiate this is to say to the Agent "I note that the vendors would accept £165000 - would they be prepared to leave <list of items> behind?". Don't necessarily accept the £165000 when you ask this question, because the vendors may for example want to keep the shed. Once you have a confirmed list, make the offer, perhaps dropping £500 if the shed is going.

As soon as the deal is struck, get the list of items recorded in writing - do it yourself if necessary.

Yorkie1

DVardysShadow wrote: »

As soon as the deal is struck, get the list of items recorded in writing - do it yourself if necessary.

And be precise - don't just say 'curtain poles' - it is not unheard of on here for people to take the nice poles and replace them with cheap plastic ones. Make sure you specify the ones which are there now, so there's minimal risk of swaps...

Mrs_Imp

When I bought my flat, the first offer was rejected. I increased it on the condition that the white goods were left in the kitchen. The owner was happy to do that.

There's a chance that your sellers new property already has some of the things you're after, or has different sized windows etc, so there's no harm in asking.

DRP

englandcrew wrote: »

Hi,

What is the "norm" when it comes to fixtures and fittings? I have just had a offer on a house I like rejected. I offered £160,000 and assumed that we would pay extra for any items of furniture they wanted to leave behind. The vendor is holding out for £165,000.

I was thinking of offering £165,000 and included in this price making sure ovens, sheds, curtain rails etc are included. So basically not paying any extra for fixture and fittings on top

Is this allowed? Do you think this makes it more attractive or will they be expecting money on top

i would offer 'a bit' more (say 2k) on the promise of including the fixtures and fittings (as they're unlikely to be worth more than that). See where that gets you and perhaps later increase further to seal the deal.

dimbo61

Is £165K the original asking price? what is the house worth ?
If you make any offer make sure its subject to survey and valuation!
So make the offer for ALL the items you want included including the house.
People have been known to remove carpets, light fittings and even wall sockets ( brass replaced with cheap white plastic)

sirmosh

The only possible issue I'm aware of comes down the SDLT, if you try and pay seperately for chattels it's likely HMRC will investigate the purchase to check you weren't avoiding SDLT and if you give them more than £1,000 it becomes difficult to justify most of the time since second hand items are valued low by HMRC. If you are including the extra in the purchase price and therefore paying SDLT on it then there shouldn't be an issue.

Brallaqueen

Although you can include fixtures and fittings in a sale, there is very liitle comeback if they decide to take it all with them anyway. The costs and hassle of pursuing the vendor afterwards can be seen in a lot of threads on this forum, including one today!

I personally would not bank on f&f being left or add on a few K to my offer price to include them in the sale. It is too risky for me.

DizzyDasher

Agree that there may be no way to pursue the vendors if they don't live up to their side of the bargain - but that's also true if they trash the house in some way.

We did include household items in the negotiation. We started at something like 10pc below asking based on some comparables. They came back with something more like 3pc below asking, based on some more favourable comparables. We came back at 7pc and including white goods, oven, etc. and pointed out why their "comparable" properties were actually better in some ways than the one they were selling (bigger garden, semi-detached, or whatever). They conceded that and came back at 5pc and a list of furniture they would be willing to leave behind if we would find it helpful (which we did, as we were moving out of rented - which they knew). The furniture was pretty rubbish to be honest, but it was a useful stop-gap and they obviously didn't want it anyway, so it saved us some cash and just made the whole process a bit easier.

So after a few rounds we came to a point where everybody was happy. It was a bit stressful (my first time buying!) but it all went smoothly, they left the house in a really nice state with all the relevant items in, nice and tidy - we're still in touch now and I think everybody was very happy with their side of the bargain.

I suspect that is pretty normal for this to be part of the negotiation process, so you definitely should not feel awkward about asking for this. One way you could put it is "my budget is very tight, I am already at the top end, however, I could go a bit further if the vendor were willing to leave X, Y and Z items" and go from there.

Good luck!

englandcrew

Thank you very much for the info guys it has been very helpful. I will be leaving it around a week before going back with another offer. I said the last offer was my highest so dont want to go back to quick. Im hoping the seller comes back to me in the mean time!