Buying furniture from vendor

rosie383

Just to give you an idea to add to the excellent advice above. We offered a gas cooker, fridge freezer, 4 piece suite and a couple of cupboards to our buyer for £120. All are oldish but clean and working perfectly. She doesn't want any of it so we will sell what we can on ebay and donate some to a local charity. It would have done us a favour if she had wanted to buy them, but fair enough.

barbiedoll

We left our ancient sofa and (reliable, working) fridge-freezer as well as our sofabed which was hardly used, and our very expensive shelving unit for our buyer when we moved. We did ask him first, he was over the moon to have been offered the stuff, he was especially pleased with the sofas, he was planning on sitting on deckchairs for the first few months!

They were no use to us and it would have cost us money/time to remove and dump them, we didn't even consider asking our buyer for any cash.

OP, if I were you, I wouldn't seem too keen to buy their second-hand stuff, I doubt that they would be keeping any of it and as others have said, it's going to cost them time or money to shift the stuff, either to sell or dump.

Maybe offer something like £300 for the lot, depending on what it is that you want, less if it's just a washing machine and a load of crockery, more if it is decent furniture that you know you will use for several years. And yes, £150 for a second-hand washing machine is far too much, you can get a new one for not much more than that!

Errata

Beko WM at Argos - £160 with a guarantee.

move2k15

Thanks for all your replies. From what I can see on old Zoopla pics the current vendor must have bought some of the stuff off the previous guys so it's at least 3rd hand. So I think I'll err on the side of caution and offer few hundred but make it clear I'm not that bothered and hope like you all suggest that it's too much hassle for him to take. I don't want to pay for a load of tat that I then have to dump in the not to distant future!!

Argghhh

offer £100 for the lot or nothing. if he refuses insist on the house being totally empty on completion anything remaining will be charged for storage / removal

rosie383

I agree with the above. Too many people move in to find carp that they neither want nor need. Get the solicitor to send a message to the vendor specifying that the house wnd garden must be left completely empty if he doesn't accept your offer. Our buyer's solicitor did this and tbh my dh was just going to leave a few bits thinking it would be fine. Once I pointed out that the buyer could get them disposed of and end us the bill, he has realised that we can't do that.

LannieDuck

OTOH if you don't insist on fully cleared (and don't mind sorting through stuff), he might leave some things that you can use. Ours left all the light fixtures and fittings (after having requested £400 for them), white goods, curtains etc.

move2k15

Is it worth asking the EA if I can just speak to the vendor directly? I've tried typing out an email but in black & white I fear I am coming across a bit bratty! Or maybe I'm worrying too much about trying to be nice!!
I think some of the pieces in the house are probably fairly decent but just not to my taste so I don't really want them, even for free. Whereas the sofas/kitchen table I would be happy for him to leave but not pay for (as I will be replacing as soon as I can afford to) and the 2 double beds and washing machine I don't mind offering something for!!

LannieDuck

I did it all through the EA and only went through the solicitors at the end to make it official.

We did speak to the vendors face-to-face as they showed us the various items they were offering for sale, but our offer etc was sent via EA. If we had negotiated, I think I would have preferred to do that via EA too.

Is your vendor's EA amenable?

move2k15

Yep, I only have positive things to say about them. I've read horror stories but they seem really on the ball and if/when I sell I would not hesitate in using them myself. My only gripe is that they have 'sold' me as really enthusiastic to the vendor - which I totally am about the house. I did all the things when viewing that you are not supposed to do - totally did not play it cool!! Which now makes it a bit awkward when negotiating furniture as I think the vendor thinks I'm an easy sell!!

I'm actually just being a bit of a wuss, I need to bite the bullet and email them with a list and a offer and not over explain/justify. If he wants some cash then woohoo and if he thinks he can get more then I'll just ask him to clear house and buy a few cheap things whilst I save up!