Offered £20,000 below asking price

theartfullodger

Leave it for a week then repeat the offer, in writing, plus all the good things about you (eg can move fast, cash buyer, whatever,..) to agent and through front door of house, keep copy: If appropriate from your solicitor.


Happened to me, I made a low offer on a house that hadn't sold for 2 years. Got the rudest ever rejection via the agent, about how vendor had never been so insulted etc etc..


I waited a week, resubmitted same offer, accepted. That was 18 years ago: Now I selling it - via the same agents!

ess0two

Is the bathroom,kitchen functional? doubtful vendors will drop to fund an update of the property? You may get some leeway with an old boiler.

panam

Amanda2468 wrote: »

Thank you everyone for your advice. We are buying with the open market help to buy scheme and it is capped at £250k for the maximum we can offer as I would be willing to offer more but restricted by this

You are not restricted by a cap of £250k, but you would lose the benefit of the government bonus if you went over £250k. Have you worked out what that is worth to you? The maximum benefit is £3k (on £12k ISA savings). That is, of course doubled if you and your partner both have £12k Help to Buy Isa's.

So you could go above £250k (assuming you have the extra funds) but might lose up to £6k by doing so.

Do you/your partner also have a LISA, and has it been open for a year (even just with £1). That does not have the £250k cap, and it may be possible to transfer £4k into that from your Help to Buy ISA, giving you an alternative bonus of £1k (£2k if it also applies to partner). If you can straddle the tax years you could double that.

So you may find you are losing £6k benefit at a purchase price of, say, £255 because you can't use the Help to Buy. But you may not be losing so much, and you may be able to mitigate that loss by using the LISA instead.

Only you know your own figures. But it is often said here that a few £k to secure the house you really want, for the long term, may be a price worth paying.

But I do agree that they ought to be dropping the price after so long, and that the cap of £250 makes a good bargaining chip... so long as you don't convince yourself that it is an absolute barrier.

Amanda2468

Think our plan is to go and view the property again this week and take it from there.

Possibly look at our finances and see if we would offer higher than the £250k

If not then it’s not meant to be. Thank you for everyone who took the time to comment.

Scottishgal19

Hope you don’t mind me posting on your thread was just wondering how you got on with the second offer?

I am in a similar situation regarding a property I love That has been on the market for a while with little interest but on for over my DIP and thinking of going in with lower offer.

Crashy_Time

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I've just dropped £20k on a £240k AP. But not all sellers are realistic.

Brexit has focused some minds I think, interesting times.