No central heating. What to offer?

NELondoner

In an upcoming area of London, soon to welcome the Crossrail I have found a great property to buy. I have a feeling the asking price from the Vendor/Estate agent is above the actual value (but aren't most in London!?).
PLEASE offer any advice/ opinions on what to offer for this type of property.

2 bed Terrace house with garden, wanting to sell for 365K
NO CENTRAL HEATING!
otherwise recently refurbished (bathroom, flooring, lick of paint, new electric oven/hob)
near a train station
...
I've read that central heating can raise the property value by 13-15%. Other similar size properties in the area with central heating are marketed between 385-400K (although what they are sold for I don't know)

Thanks!

NELondoner

FYI the actual asking price has been reduced from 375K to 350K as has been on the market for about 1 month.

HappyMJ

It's got to have some sort of heating. What's it got already?

Electric storage and panel heating throughout is still a reasonable method of heating a house. It's just not the preferred method of heating any more.

A £365k house isn't going to be affected that much and the asking price may already take into account the fact it doesn't have central heating. How much would it cost to add CH to the property? How much would it be worth if it had CH. It may be worth at the top end of £400k with CH and £365k is a good price. Even if it could be worth at the bottom end at £385k it's highly unlikely that it would cost £20k to install CH. Otherwise the vendor would do it and make some easy money.

If you're not sure what to offer on a property and most of aren't really experts then get an independent valuer in to give you an estimated value on the property and base your offer on that.

kinger101

I'd ignore the 13-15%. The amount central heating raises the value of the property by is the amount is costs to install central heating. This might be in the region of about £4-7k for a 2 bed property. You'd have to get some quotes. Plus a bit more for some redecorating after (you might have done this anyway). But you're getting a brand new system for this rather than an old non-condensing boiler that might be on the edge anyway.

If you want actual sold prices in the area, you can check sold prices via Rightmove or Zoopla. Of course, the lack of central heating has already been factored into the house price anyway. I thing you're being overly optimistic about getting this significantly below asking price. In might even go over.