Sealed Bids on a house

ashleyj722

I found a house that both myself and my wife likes. Its a 2 bed terrace house with a guide price of £139,000. We really love the place and and offers are made by sealed bid. There seems to be alot of interest in the place and we want to bid about £145,000 to get it. Zoopla values the place at only £136,000. My question is how much above the guide price is too much? Any advice on making an informed offer? The property is located in the South East.

littleredhen

No experience but plenty of info online
http://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/beginners/plots/sealed-bids

Thrugelmir

ashleyj722 wrote: »

Zoopla values the place at only £136,000.

How can anybody value a property that they haven't inspected?

C_Mababejive

Sealed bids is just an estate agent device to force closure on a sale and reap their commission.

Bossypants

You think very hard about what you would be 1) able to and 2) willing to sacrifice for sake of living in that particular house (i.e. mortgage payments, putting more into the deposit), and then you bid accordingly.

I had to do this recently, and it was extremely difficult, because the flat ticked every practical box (and I had a lot of boxes, many of them hard to tick at my budget in that area) and in addition was by far the nice, most comfortable flats I had seen. I was willing to give 'very much a lot' for the chance of living there, but I found that once I started to think concretely in numbers and what each number would mean for my lifestyle if I got it, I found there was a point where my stomach got kind of squirmy and a little voice popped up over all the excitement and went 'hmm...'

I bid £1,000 under that amount, had the offer accepted (it was still almost 25% above asking, although the agent mentioned that there had been others in that bracket, but my position was the best), and two months later, I haven't once had second thoughts, even with the laundry list of issues which have now come out of the woodwork. I wonder if I would have been able to say the same if I'd bid that £1,000 more, though.

audigex

The entire concept of sealed bids is a nonsense contrived to force buyers to enter their best offer, not the best compromise between buyer/seller's ideal price. And, as mentioned above, secure a sale ASAP for the best price possible. That's all for the estate agent/vendor, not the buyer. Personally I'd refuse to play their game, but I don't know how things work in the south east.

If you really love it, the best way to get it is to put in the highest price you're willing to pay for it. If you're happy to just put in an offer and lose it if you're unsuccessful, put in a price that reflects what you think it's worth

At the end of the day a property is worth what someone will pay for it, and you have no idea how much anyone else loves it.

ashleyj722

In the end we didn't get our offer accepted. The house went for about £149,000

missis_amber

How do you know how much the house went for?


I bought my house via sealed bid, I bid over the asking price but well below the average price of houses on that street. It needed so much work doing to it and I factored all that in, considered my finances, recognised that there was money to be made. It was stressful but it was still better than the to & from I've had with other properties where you put an offer in, someone offers higher, then you put your offer up and it just goes round!

Surrey_EA

audigex wrote: »

The entire concept of sealed bids is a nonsense contrived to force buyers to enter their best offer, not the best compromise between buyer/seller's ideal price. And, as mentioned above, secure a sale ASAP for the best price possible. That's all for the estate agent/vendor, not the buyer.

The entire concept of a seller instructing an estate agent to act on their behalf is to achieve the highest possible price in the shortest amount of time. An estate agent is not there to assist the buyer in getting the property at a compromise price lower than the seller's ideal price.

Asking for sealed bids typically only happens when there are multiple buyers, in similar purchasing positions, each interested in buying the same property.

As you rightly say, any property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.