Offer price v asking price - what's realistic these days?

Landofwood

ReadingTim wrote: »

Fifty percent and a night with the vendor's wife.

Anything less is just insulting.

Indeed.

It's always amusing when I hear people boasting about getting "10% off asking price".

Congratulations, you got 10% off a made up number and probably paid exactly what the house was worth in current market conditions.

Pixie5740

This is another, how long is a piece of string question. It very much depends on where the property is and how buoyant (or not) the market is in that area.

MrsFingersCrossed

Agree, and it's worth remembering that any research (ie land registry data) is several months behind the current market. We paid several thousand over the asking price to secure the house we wanted. There were 10 viewings on the first day, and we'd previously had three asking price offers rejected on other houses, (and one 5 grand over rejected) so wanted to be in with a good chance on this one, and we were accepted. We're happy we are paying what it's worth to us. And Zoopla valuations are pie in sky in my experience - our house (the one we're selling) was estimated by Zoopla as £300+ thousand over the realistic selling price.

Landofwood

Pixie5740 wrote: »

This is another, how long is a piece of string question. It very much depends on where the property is and how buoyant (or not) the market is in that area.

Your comments suggest that market buoyancy should influence whether a buyer should pay asking price or not, which is only a general rule and cannot be applied in isolation.

The OP is asking what the offer price should be in relation to asking price of a specific property. We have no idea whether this property has been priced accurately.

The most important thing the OP should do is use the vast array of tools and data available to derive an approximate value based on property condition and location.

Everything else is just noise.

Digsby

Landofwood wrote: »

Indeed.

It's always amusing when I hear people boasting about getting "10% off asking price".

Congratulations, you got 10% off a made up number and probably paid exactly what the house was worth in current market conditions.

Indeed, it could be 10% off the asking price and *still* be 10% more than the next highest offer.

jimpix12

Was going to post a long one but Landofwood has said exactly what I would have.

When people talk about offering what 'the house is worth' they sadly don't mean the rebuild cost. Get PropertyBee, use HousePrices.io and any of the other various tools and see what the market value actually is.

Surrey_EA

spunko2010 wrote: »

Was going to post a long one but Landofwood has said exactly what I would have.

When people talk about offering what 'the house is worth' they sadly don't mean the rebuild cost. Get PropertyBee, use HousePrices.io and any of the other various tools and see what the market value actually is.

In most cases that I deal with the house itself is the cheap bit, the land is where the value lies.

It's far easier to accurately determine value for a property if it's in an area where lots of similar properties have recently been sold, and a trend can be established.

When the property is relatively unique, or very few sales of similar homes have taken place it is more difficult to work out market value.

hohum

We ended up offering about 8% under the 'offers in region of' price. It was difficult to gauge a market price as there hadn't been any sales of comparable properties in that street. We had a look nearby, considered the repairs we would probably need to make & length of time on market. It was offers of £105k, we initially offered £90k, they came back with £96k and we accepted as our estimation of value less necessary repairs was £95k and I was keen for an easy life. Of course then we had mortgage offer saga which scuppered my easy life plan. I've since seen houses offered nearby with asking prices of £15k over what they were asking 8 months ago. Mostly they are from an agency which is known to overprice offers but still, is interesting!

agrinnall

It's one of the aspects of the Scottish system that makes things clearer for both seller and buyer - the Home Report gives a professional valuation of the property, everybody knows it before making an offer, and the offer can then be based on a real figure rather than a made up one.

I'm attempting to relocate to England and I had an offer of £165K accepted on a house with an asking price of £170K. I had a Homebuyers Report done that valued it at £160K and suggested some areas of concern, so I checked that the vendor would be willing to renegotiate if I paid for further surveys. They said they would, so I got the surveys done which indicated £11K of work needing to be done, so I reduced my offer to £160K, and the vendors completely refused to budge, so I walked away. That cost me several hundred pounds that wouldn't have been necessary under the Scottish system (or indeed the English system if there hadn't been so much opposition to HIPs).

Beancounter

I am in Scotland so work under a different system, how accurate are the offers you accept compared to valuations? Is aggrinall's example above typical.