Bottom end of the property market - selling negotiation.

jbainbridge

The price you want and advertise at aren't really that important. What are you 'expecting' to get? What have similar houses sold for? - you have checked the sold prices haven't you?

When we sold a couple of years ago I thought - oh it'll be worth x, when in reality houses down the road had sold for x-20. In the end we were pleased with the price we got.

penguingirl

What's your position?

Our previous property was marketed at 150k in December as I was due to start a job 50 miles away in February. We bought for 147k in 2009, and although we had done a lot of work on the house, the market hadn't recovered at all. In January we received an offer of 140k which we rejected and they quickly upped it to 145k. We tried to push for 147k as psychologically it was hard to make a 'loss' on the house. They refused to budge, but said they'd leave it on the table. We then had an offer accepted on a property in the area we were re-locating to, so reluctantly accepted the 145k. It would not have been worth losing the sale for 2k, especially when we needed to move for work. We've now been in our new house nearly 4 months, and you sort of forget the annoyance and the money side when you owe so much to the bank anyway! But if I'd not been in a rush to move I'd probably have marketed the house at a higher price, knowing that we could afford to wait and then drop the price if needed, whereas we went for a priced to sell approach.

Immers7

Your property has been on the market for 2-3 months and you are arguing over the £1k. You have only had one offer in that time, which suggests that your asking price is higher than the market value.

A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush as the saying goes.

Argghhh

sometimes you have to take a small hit - i look at it as i paid x for the house and i got x minus 5k, however i lived there rent free for 5 years

ellie27

3 months on market, first and only offer on the house and you are trying to negotiate for £1k extra? If they come back and say no, they can't up the offer then I think it would be wise to accept it.

tc3team

It's good to get an idea of other people's views. Time will tell a story I guess.

GoldenShadow

Maybe they don't want to play games, hence said 'this is final/only offer'.

The house we are in the process of buying, up for 190K. We offered 186K. Why 186K? They had a buyer in place before who offered that, but the sale fell through because they couldn't get a mortgage. The EA said they didn't think they would accept less, so we put an offer in to match the previous buyer on the basis that we like the house, we are FTBs with AIP and as good to go as you can get (not in a rental contract or anything).

I didn't want to annoy them by offering less than what they had agreed before because property has been moving fast here and I think we would have lost out, but if yours has been on the market 2-3 months and only had one offer, that suggests a different situation. For me as a FTB, saving a couple of K doesn't matter much to me because it barely affects deposit levels and barely affects mortgage amount. If it was 5-10K that's a little different. I would bare in mind that 1) this really might be all they have hence them saying this is it, and 2) your EA might have told them you've had no other offers etc therefore they reckon what they've offered is acceptable.

tc3team

I guess it can work both ways. If a FTB has already stated their max offer, 500 or 1k more unexpected on other costs later on can then tip them over and potentially be a deal breaker.

First time sellers can be as in a bad place as a FTB because of the end of the market it attracts.

Better to know sooner, than to see a chain broken later and incur costs ourselves.

Whatever happens, this has been a good learning exercise and we are not in the urgent need to leave.