EA pushing low offer- playing games?

lee111s

Fingers crossed it all works out

rosie383

Sorry DRP didn't see your post. I had a brief conversation with my dh at work and we had already discussed what we could accept. It's more the case that we need to really look properly at a lower offer and see how that works for us.

caprikid1

"A £160k offer on a £164k asking price is not a "low offer", it's a pretty good first offer.
In fact, at that asking price, you'd be expecting that everyone will start by offering no more than £160k."

Sorry but you are missing something here.

An estate agent will often keep refusing / claiming an offer has been rejected even without telling you. The buyer may have had his offer rejected several times already, this is just the first time you have known about it.

The buyer may have come up 10K already on their first offer.

Seriously £160K offer on a £164K property , how much were you expecting to get offered £180K ?. If you have to work out "How that works" then you have something wrong in your calculations because you should be ready to go at that price.

rosie383

Eh no. We weren't expecting 180. We are looking at what similar houses are going for and we had a verbal offer from another viewer for closer to the asking price and that threw us a bit. As it happens this other viewer must have been playing silly beggars and said to the EA that they now don't want to offer. Who knows what was in their head that they came and viewed twice, stayed for ages saying how great it was and what a great price! Weird.
Anyway, thanks to those of you who have given constructive advice. We are going to have a proper talk about it tonight and let the EA know for definite tomorrow morning.

somethingcorporate

Losing a house for the sake of a couple of grand from some good buyers (no chain, FTB etc) is a bit silly unless you have a good backup plan.

If it was me I would probably take it!

rosie383

I think we may well do that. I think I was just resenting the pressure from the EA not wanting to wait for one day with the threat that the buyer would walk if they didnt get an immediate answer, and the fact that the other couple were messing around which threw us off balance.

somethingcorporate

They're working for you, you may want to remind them that you're the paying customer (most of them I have dealt with are idiots I am afraid to say).

rosie383

Oh, and as for the £160 not being their first offer, she rang them literally from outside the house and the EA rang us right away so I'm fairly confident that it was.

TheCyclingProgrammer

rosie383 wrote: »

So it will not seem unreasonable if I go back to him and say we need to discuss it properly? What if I say to him that if the buyer could come back with an offer of, say, £162, then we could wrap things up today, otherwise they will have to wait. Or is that totally the wrong thing to do?

Seems reasonable. If the buyer really wants the house they will either:

a) Accept the above if they really can stretch to it
b) Decline but wait for you to consider their current offer if its genuinely their maximum offer

If they aren't willing to either negotiate or wait a few days then I'd question how serious they are.

As a buyer I know how frustrating it is to wait for a seller to come back to you but a day or so isn't unreasonable.

Sounds to me like the EA thinks it really is their best offer - has he seen evidence of their mortgage AIP and/or deposit?

Hoploz

This is the bit where the agent earns their commission! They will do their investigations on the potential buyer and weigh up their situation. It would be normal to expect someone to leave a little wiggle room above their first offer.

I think it was a good idea to make the counter offer. Not too clear whether the first offer was rejected or not though ... Is it a case of if they hold their nerve and wait till tomorrow they might get away without paying the extra 2k?

... Oo-er how exciting! Good luck, hope all goes to plan.