Offers Over Scotland (EH21) FTB

simonjstone_2

Hi guys
I wanted to check about the offers over. I am English and all my property experience is down south.
We have seen a couple of properties online and got the HV reports. I don't want to pay over the odd's and am concerned by price drops over the next year. Our most recent article showed a 4.5% drop last year in the bigger towns of which I am in. The other side of town is cheaper by 50k for similar properties.
So Offers under the offer over or stick to HV?

Pixie5740

simonjstone wrote: »

Hi guys
I wanted to check about the offers over. I am English and all my property experience is down south.
We have seen a couple of properties online and got the HV reports. I don't want to pay over the odd's and am concerned by price drops over the next year. Our most recent article showed a 4.5% drop last year in the bigger towns of which I am in. The other side of town is cheaper by 50k for similar properties.
So Offers under the offer over or stick to HV?

I assume by "HV" you mean Home Report. What is your solicitor advising? Are similar properties in the area selling for more than the Home Report valuations?

simonjstone_2

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I assume by "HV" you mean Home Report. What is your solicitor advising? Are similar properties in the area selling for more than the Home Report valuations?

Not done Sol's yet. I want to go int with info. There hasn't been a lot on the market recently and some properties are done privately.

Pixie5740

If you don't have a solicitor you can't make an offer. A solicitor with knowledge of the local market should be able to guide you as to whether your offer is sensible or not.

googler

simonjstone wrote: »

Our most recent article showed a 4.5% drop last year in the bigger towns of which I am in.

Which article?

The other side of town is cheaper by 50k for similar properties.

Examples?

So Offers under the offer over or stick to HV?

As the computer says in the Sci Fi movie;

"Insufficient Data. Cannot Compute"

As was said, you cannot make an offer without a solicitor, and if you pick a solicitor who is active in your target area, they should be familiar with market trends, both for housing stock which has sold, but also with that which went unsold, or didn't achieve asking price, etc. ...

dunroving

Way too many generalisations in the OP. For a start, which city are you looking in, and what part of the city?

There is so much variability within the UK, within Scotland, and even within specific cities in Scotland, that any advice you get may be based on false assumptions.

When I bought my house (north of Glasgow) in 2007, houses were going over offer by between 10% and 30%. I know of a house in Bearsden that recently advertised at o/o £180k and sold for, I believe, £206k (that's 14% over), with six closed bids.

Is the seller going with closed bids, or a closing date? Or negotiating offers as they come in? What you offer would be different in these two circumstances.

Many questions o be answered before people can really advise you adequately.

elleJay42

We bought in Midlothian in September last year. We were told properties were going for 6% over valuation at the time in that area which would have made the house 217 when it was valued at 205, we offered 210 and it was accepted.

The house went to a closing date so there must have been at least 1 other offer I think but we got it.

I'd maybe offer a wee bit over the valuation, if houses are selling in an average of 14 days in Edinburgh at the moment I'd think you'll have a bit of competition. I think ours was about 20 days from going on the market to having our offer accepted.

Just a note too, EH21 has Musselburgh in it and we were priced out of there in 1 year. When we started looking to move there were a few good places and after we finally sold our flat in Aberdeen 10 months later we couldn't get much more than a 2 bedroom flat for our money, that's how strong the prices are right now

Bvv

We bought in central Edinburgh about 6 months ago and ended up paying about 8% over the asking price / 3% over the home report value. Another property we looked at, and considered making an offer on, ended up selling 25% above the asking price / 22% above the home report value.

These two properties are in a similar area, similar size, similar-ish home report value, so it really is a question of how well do you (or your solicitor) know the area you want to buy in? How quick do houses usual sell? How long have the properties you're interested in been on the market? Most of the properties we looked at had closing dates set within two weeks of coming on the market. In those cases there is little point offering under or even at home report value. In the end we went for a property that did not have a closing date, which allowed us to gradually increase our offer, rather than offering a stupidly high amount. And yes, get a solicitor soon, we found ours quite helpful in advising how much to offer.

davidmcn

dunroving wrote: »

Way too many generalisations in the OP. For a start, which city are you looking in, and what part of the city?

There's a rather big clue in the subject line!

dunroving

davidmcn wrote: »

There's a rather big clue in the subject line!

I don't see the name of a city in the Subject line ... Scotland isn't a city.

[Aha, gotcha. Requires the reader to know that EH means Edinburgh. Doh.]

sgun

In Edinburgh EH6/7 and surrounds offers are going over home report at present by 4% to 8% (I'm only talking about the lower end of the market £100,000 to £150,000 no idea about more expensive properties). I was chatting to a solicitor just this Monday who said that the lack of new properties coming onto the market has increased the competitiveness and although the home report is being used very much as a guide rather than gospel, any desirable properties are being snapped up. He showed me an example. A pretty ok ground floor flat near Leith Walk, went to closing date within two weeks of going on the market, had 11 offers all over the HR price. That's a bit crazy but that's what you are up against.

Its really important to get a solicitor who knows the area and market, much more so than in England. Certainly it seems that offers under HR won't get much of a look in. I doubt EH21 is much different from EH6/7 area for the market, I know both areas pretty well. Do you have a link to the properties?