Buying a repo'd ex-council house?

wadaw

Hello everyone,

I am a prospective FTB and on Monday will be viewing an ex-council 3 bed semi detached house in non-estate location in west Norfolk.

The house is a bank repo and has been on the market for 100K for some considerable months (well before Christmas).

It requires central heating, new kitchen, bathroom. In todays market I think this is overpriced and I was intending to offer around the 70K mark.

Does anyone have any thoughts / experiences of similar situations they could share with me??

budgetflyer

Normal CH, kitchen and bathroom wont cost 30K so if you are pricing your reduction based an that then you are miles off.
HOWEVER , its only worth what someone will pay. Put your offer in and see what happens.

flea72

if its a repo and priced at £100K, then that is the mininum the bank will accept

with repos, the advertised price, is usually a starting guide, as they want numerous people bidding on it, so they can go to sealed bids, etc. and try to get as much money as possible for it

the fact the house doesnt have a sold sign up means nothing - repos, tend to stay on the open market, until exchange of contract, as i said above, they want a bidding war, and the more people through the door, thinking they might get a bargain, works in the banks favour

i think in this instance you would be lucky to get the house for £10k under asking price, let alone £30k - banks can play the waiting game, as they know they will get their money eventually - the less they sell it for, the more they have to try and get back from the person who was repossessed, and its easier to play the housing market, than it is to get money off someone who has none (hence the repossession)

zzzLazyDaisy

I doubt if you'll get it for 30k under the asking price, but there is nothing to stop you making the offer. If there are no other offers on the horizon, the bank may be willing to negotiate on the price. I got £30k off my last house, which was a repo (the bank wanted £127k and I paid 97k) but that was in the early '90's. The law has changed since then, and lenders now have a legal duty to get the best price, which wasn't the case then.