Cant buy house due to stupid offer games!

marmitequeen

Totally sympathise. We finally had an offer accepted and are now biting nails and waiting for the results of the valuation.

However, getting to the point of having an offer accepted has taken 6 months. We are in the south-east. My advice:
1. Make sure the EAs know you are serious buyers. Call them or pop in every week. Ask to speak to the same person and ask for their advice. Emphasise you are in a position to go fast or work at the vendor's timescale. (As long as that's true).

2. When you put in your offer you have to also sell yourselves as buyers. We were advised to remind them that we are serious. We did this by supporting our offer with details of our mortgage advisor and AIP and our solicitor.

3. If you haven't decided on a solicitor yet try asking each EA for the one they find the most efficient. If you start hearing the same name then investigate feedback/reviews/opinions and checking their costs. Before I am shot down by the 'don't believe an EA they'll be getting a backhander' brigade, I am not talking about locking yourself into a closed shop, I am talking about making your EA think you are regarding them as an expert and picking their brains. It'll help you build a relationship with them. You are still in charge when it comes to who to instruct.

4. Make sure you really know the sold prices in all the roads you are looking and and what those houses were like. You can find this on Rightmove, Zoopla or just the Land Registry site (and others). We might just have been sad enough to create a spreadsheet showing sold price, date, square footage, condition, bedrooms... (Ok, so that's sad but we became much better at understanding how different properties are priced in our area).

We almost got to the point of putting notes through the doors of of key roads and would have done so if we hadn't have been successful (hopefully) with the house we are buying. There are various threads here where people talk about their success with this that are worth reading if you want to go down this route.

Finally, don't offer on anything you are not sure about. Better to take your time and get the right house for you.

Good luck. x

ThemeOne

2010 wrote: »

Never ever buy a flat.
You`ll have neighbours above, below and at the sides of you.
On top of this you`ll be ripped off every year by a thing called "service charge", ground rent and management fees.

I think you paint a bit of a bleak picture there! You have neighbours both sides of you in a terraced house after all, and in a flat there's always the ground and top floor if you don't want people above / below. The flat I have now only has neighbours to one side and below.

You're right about the charges of course, but in all the flats I've had ground rent has been nominal e.g. £10/year. Service Charge I think can be a rip off, but on the other hand it means you're not responsible for external repairs which is a relief for busy people.

I think the bigger the block the more you'll likely get unpleasant surprises on service charges - particularly large ex-local authority blocks where the service charge usually won't include "major works" i.e. lift replacement, external repointing etc.

xylophone

I was very happy in my 999 year lease flat with landscaped garden, garage, and five minute walk to the station. The ground rent was strictly controlled by the terms of the lease.

As for neighbours, flat, house or bungalow, you get the good, the bad and the ugly.......:)

Windsorcastle

makeyourdaddyproud wrote: »

By offering more than the advertised price, you have spooked each seller into believing their house is worth more than advertised. They most likely will reassess the value for a higher sale price.

I'm sorry but it's people like you that inflate the market at every turn and I have no sympathy.

I think the second part is a bit harsh! But the first part of this answer is spot on! Everyone knows the whole 'offer' thing is part of a dance - you always offer as low as you dare (without being ridiculous) and then you play a bit of 'offer ping-pong' until the seller bites. Human psychology is such that by offering at asking price (or bizarrely, above!!) you make the seller think they have underpriced in the first place.

I cannot understand why anyone would offer above the asking price straight off - if I was the seller, I would think it was a rash buyer making a rash offer that they probably aren't going to back up with actions. Bigger isn't always better!

MaxTheCat

bouicca21 wrote: »

The market in London has gone crazy. Houses go instantly, without even a second viewing. People are spending hundreds of thousands with less thought than they would put into buying a coat or even choosing a sandwich for lunch.

It's at least meet offer price, often beat it, especially in the sub 250k level. It has become really difficult to work out what to offer. Past selling prices are no help. I am about to look at a property 'guide price' 325-375k. What the hell help is that in working out where to pitch an offer?

I'm in London and I've bought in 2 hot markets and on neither occasion have I paid asking price. You just have to show the vendor the money and not appear too keen. If you look desperate you will be taken to the cleaners. Have a look at recent sales on the road and tell the EA you are not interested in setting records.

racing_blue

olias wrote: »

OP, you should move north! For £200k I'll let you have my 4 bed 3 bath stonebuilt townhouse in a conservation area with 2 receptions, a utility and a garage. In fact I'd snap your hand off
Olias

It was going so well until you slipped in that dismemberment clause at the end

Jaybo10

marmitequeen wrote: »

Totally sympathise. We finally had an offer accepted and are now biting nails and waiting for the results of the valuation.

However, getting to the point of having an offer accepted has taken 6 months. We are in the south-east. My advice:
1. Make sure the EAs know you are serious buyers. Call them or pop in every week. Ask to speak to the same person and ask for their advice. Emphasise you are in a position to go fast or work at the vendor's timescale. (As long as that's true).

2. When you put in your offer you have to also sell yourselves as buyers. We were advised to remind them that we are serious. We did this by supporting our offer with details of our mortgage advisor and AIP and our solicitor.

3. If you haven't decided on a solicitor yet try asking each EA for the one they find the most efficient. If you start hearing the same name then investigate feedback/reviews/opinions and checking their costs. Before I am shot down by the 'don't believe an EA they'll be getting a backhander' brigade, I am not talking about locking yourself into a closed shop, I am talking about making your EA think you are regarding them as an expert and picking their brains. It'll help you build a relationship with them. You are still in charge when it comes to who to instruct.

4. Make sure you really know the sold prices in all the roads you are looking and and what those houses were like. You can find this on Rightmove, Zoopla or just the Land Registry site (and others). We might just have been sad enough to create a spreadsheet showing sold price, date, square footage, condition, bedrooms... (Ok, so that's sad but we became much better at understanding how different properties are priced in our area).

We almost got to the point of putting notes through the doors of of key roads and would have done so if we hadn't have been successful (hopefully) with the house we are buying. There are various threads here where people talk about their success with this that are worth reading if you want to go down this route.

Finally, don't offer on anything you are not sure about. Better to take your time and get the right house for you.

Good luck. x

All this is good stuff.

We found it crazy in London, prices often £25-50k above asking price for our price bracket :eek:

The only other thing I would add is to get in quick. Try and be one of the first to see a property (badger the EA if they are only doing an open house to get in at some point before the rest) and, if you like it, offer quickly and realistically for the market. It shows you are serious and may curry favour if it is between you and another...

All the best

MGCP

My experience of the London market (Zone 3) is that anything which came on to the market in the areas we were interested in which looked "good" to us went as follows:

Saturday - Open day. You either get a 15 minute slot or turn up during a set hour and fight for space with other couples (the competition - all eyeing each other up warily!).

Monday - Morning. You get a call and are asked if you want to make an offer (if you haven't already been asked to make an offer on Saturday afternoon). If you offer you'll get a call back within a couple of hours saying several other people have offered at that price or above. You may go to a second round and then perhaps sealed bids within the week.

We lost 2 places going through this process. The first was on at £525k which was well above anything else that had sold on the street according to Land Registry records. We started at £470k and were politely told that two other offers had been received above the £510k mark (and that was opening offers). We had to duck out straight away. The next went on at offers above £400k, and the winning bid was around the £490k mark (well above ours).

A lot of places are going above asking price where we are looking. Latest Land Registry figures are already well out of date and of little use to help assess current prices as the market is moving so fast. A lot of buyers are selling up flats in expensive areas and looking to buy houses in the area we are looking in, money just doesn't seem to be a problem for them as any house Zone 3 looks cheap to someone selling a flat in Islington/Stoke Newington etc!

mnorthern

I have recently got an offer accepted on a flat and in my personal opinion, offering at asking price makes you seem desperate. If you really like a place, then try offering at 95% at most, unless it's clearly and purposefully underpriced, eg. for a fast sale.

For example, in London, vendors manage to get 94% of asking price on average, so you should be aiming for that. You may want to check the statistics for your area though.

I have always offered between 85% and 90% at first, and I finally got my offer accepted at 93% of ask

ZA1980

We had the same problem in SE London and completely sympathise.

We saw everything in our price range because it gave us the chance to chat with the agent regularly and keep us at the forefront of their minds. We made sure we had proper chats with them about the local area, the house, the market in general as well as it helped them to see that we were serious and interested. We also called them/popped in to see when there was new stuff on the market.

We also had our mortgage agreed in principle to our absolute budget maximum, a soliciter in place and kept reiterating how flexible we were.

After losing out on one property for the same reasons as you, when we found the property that we really loved (we complete on Friday!) we included with our offer a letter explaining that we really loved the property, could see the vendor had made a real effort with it, saw ourselves starting a family there and making it a home. The vendor said that the letter was what made them accept our offer. We did bid over the asking price (they had 7 offers on the property) but the property was valued at the price we offered and we feel that it's worth it.

Good luck!