Advice on making a house offer?

sarah3891

\]Hi all,

Appreciate this is a bit of a 'who knows' question, but what is everyone's advice on making an offer on a property in terms of the opening gambit?

We have seen a house for £530k which we really like, but it needs quite a lot of updating work, albeit nothing serious etc, and we don't really want to go over £480k on a purchase price. That feels like a decent number for the house in question, but it is almost 10% less than the marketed value, so is it unreasonable?

The vendor position as far as we can tell is they are in no 'need' to move, which means of course they will likely be happy to hang on for better offers. It's also not been on the market for very long; about a month I believe which again suggests they would hang on for a bit I suspect. They are a much older couple, looking to downsize now they have an empty nest etc. They have been there for some thirty odd years and will be moving to be nearer family. Our position is equally not urgent although we will need to sell in order to buy (not yet on the market), although the market here is very buoyant with houses in our area tending to sell within a few days in the current climate or so so we are hopefully fortunate, but of course don't want to count our chickens.

Does anyone have any thoughts on opening offers?

Thanks x

KRB2725

I would get your house on the market (& then hopefully sstc) before you make an offer. I think any vendor would be more likely to take an offer a fair bit lower than asking price if the person offering was in a position to proceed.

My MIL had an asking price offer on her house within 3 days, but as the prospective purchasers hadn't sold their house there wasn't any point in accepting it. She then sold it a week later for 20K less to someone who had already accepted an offer on their house.

Tarragondragon

My partners boss, he works for an EA out of our price range, said when we were looking , "don't ever be embarassed to put an offer it, it's just a first warning shot".

I guess there's likelihood they could be insulted and not accept further offers, but realistically the worst they can do is say no. We were very cheeky when you started offering on places. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't

Hoploz

Very unlikely to be accepted for the reasons that
1) well below asking price and it is early on
2) they are in no hurry to move
3) you are not in a proceedable position, whatever the figure
4) following from 3, what if after you market your own house for a month you get an offer 50k below your asking price? You won't be able to afford this one, presumably. You don't yet know your budget for sure.
5) psychological barrier of 500k - with an asking price of 530k they are unlikely to accept an offer below this till much later on.