What do you make of this? House price going up and down...

**Juice**

We've had our eye on a property for a while that has an OIEO price on it. It needs quite a lot of work on it and was on the market for £250k, we were planning on offering less than that if we liked it anyway as we felt it was overpriced and easily needs £30-40k work on it but over the last month it was reduced to £225k and then £200k. This week it's been put back up to £250k which is really odd as I don't think they've had much interest at £50k cheaper. I guess maybe they were trying to get a sale agreed by the end of the year. There's no-one living in it at the min and it's definitely been on the market for a long while, at one point for £350k which is ridiculous for the condition of it.

The estate agents it's with are really shoddy - we were trying to arrange a weekend viewing of it and someone rang to ask if I could view it quicker as someone had made an offer on it...spoke to someone else at the agents and there was no offer on it at all - and the photos of the property are rubbish. It all just makes me really suspicious and I find it a weird situation. Any thoughts on this as neither of us can work out what's going on?

jimbog

Can you post a link?

AlexMac

This is extremely unusual behaviour by an estate agent. After all, EAs are all members of an honourable profession, requiring extensive qualifications, skills and experience, highly regulated and with rigorously enforced standards. After all, it's not as if anyone with a shiny suit, hair gel and a liveried Mini-Cooper can call themselves an Agent is it?

Oh- hang on a minute....

So don't try to double-guess their motives;

- view it, and if you like it...
- offer what you think it's worth to you, with a few £k wiggle room so that the honourable EA can tell his client he talked you up
- maybe stressing all your other plus points (not in a chain?, mortgage agreed?, solicitor identified and ready to go?...)

Good luck. If it's any consolation, there are good EAs out there... like the one who sold our last flat in a few days at 15% over the other local agents' estimates... (John Payne of London SE3 if you want to know)

But there are also really duff ones; we once rang in late on a Friday to say... we assume your client rejected the 'best and final' offer we made last Monday but it would have been nice if you'd let us know, as we are about to go to sealed bids on another.... To be told; oh- it was accepted; it's yours; didn't anyone let you know! (Ward of CT14 in Kent if you want to know)

**Juice**

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say that since they've dropped the price they've been getting offers but lowball ones based on that lower price.

If they now bump the price up a bit, they probably figure the next round of lowball offers will start coming in at about the right level.

There's a kind of logic there. Somewhere.

From what I can gather there haven't been any offers on it - although who knows if anything the EA tells me is correct. The whole thing is that they want a really quick sale so putting the price back up really doesn't make sense to me when they haven't sold quickly at this before.

Ho hum, I think I managed to forget how annoying EA's can be in the 5 years since we bought our house :rotfl:

Nobbie1967

Why not ask the EA what's going on? The worst that can happen is that they'll lie to you.

**Juice**

Nobbie1967 wrote: »

Why not ask the EA what's going on? The worst that can happen is that they'll lie to you.

Yeah I will do, it's an online estate agent so you're dealing with a random call centre all the time which makes it all a bit more frustrating. I just wondered if anyone else had any experience of it or ideas of what was happening so I could be prepared when I call.

[Deleted User]

You have probably already done this, but is it worth checking that someone at the EA haven't made a typo and the other agents are assuming its the correct price without checking with the owner?

As you haven't viewed, it might be worth a visit and discussion with the owner - not revealing your interest, but just commenting that it seems to have been offered at different prices.

I would imagine you'll get more accurate comments from them than from us. We don't know the property!

**Juice**

Yeah the price drops were definitely intentional and in two waves. If we don't get anywhere with the EA (just trying to arrange a viewing was quite painful and went nowhere) then the owner would be next but we'd have to track them down as it's not lived in at the min and I don't think has been for a while.

[Deleted User]

Would it be worth writing a letter giving your contact details and posting it, in case they are having post forwarded by Royal Mail?

iantojones40

I'm surprised people are saying this is unusual behaviour, I've seen it done many times in my area... the price gets reduced, still no interest so they whack it back up to the original price.

Bizarre yes, unusual no!

**Juice**

Hmm. I think if we did like it we'd be offering somewhere around the £200k mark anyway, they can only say no!