Thinking of putting an offer in, but....

paddyz

Could it have been a right to buy from the council or brought cheaply from a family member?

bookblogger

It was SOLD STC (not completion) when the buyer pulled out. EA told said the original buyer had bought the house for their son who was then offered a job and decided to relocate.

Definitely not a council house. I suspect they bought cheaply from a family member or as @mickygg said, could be any number of reasons.

but we shall focus on the current asking price and assess again whether we will indeed find anything quite like this properly. We've made a list of pros and cons and there's a lot more pros going for it. The only con we feel is the asking price - our limit is £450k...

Thanks all for sharing your advice and experiences.

AdrianC

bookblogger wrote: »

It was SOLD STC (not completion) when the buyer pulled out.

So it never actually sold - they had an offer which they accepted, but that never got as far as an actual sale.

Linton

A common reason for surprisingly low historical selling prices is that the price represents only part of the house. For example if a house is held as Tenants in Common and one owner buys out the other owner for half the value, the half value is what you will see in the records.

iampetesmith

The other thing to consider is what a mortgage lender's surveyor values it at. If someone does try to buy it for way more than the mortgage lender thinks it's worth, they won't lend on that amount anyway. Down-valuations are quite common now, so if a house is overpriced then they'll probably find that buyers can't get a mortgage on it.

AdrianC

iampetesmith wrote: »

The other thing to consider is what a mortgage lender's surveyor values it at. If someone does try to buy it for way more than the mortgage lender thinks it's worth, they won't lend on that amount anyway. Down-valuations are quite common now, so if a house is overpriced then they'll probably find that buyers can't get a mortgage on it.

They can - but the LtV will be based on the downvaluation, which may put them over the lender's max LtV threshold.

Crashy_Time

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Agree with AdrianC, you are totally overthinking it by your concern with what it last sold for.
Let say instead of £285k it was double that, does that mean it's now a bargain and you should snap it up at £450k ?
It's worth what the local market makes it worth. What it sold for previously is irrelevant.
FWIW there are any number of reasons why a low price may be registered which have nothing to do with what it's market price was at the time.

It is relevant to many sellers, because up until recently most people expected a price bonus just for holding a property for a few years, fortunately that idea is being challenged pretty robustly by economic reality these days, but there are still many people deluded enough to expect a big mark up for the years they have held the property and in most cases it is probably not worth trying to negotiate with them.

Crashy_Time

iampetesmith wrote: »

The other thing to consider is what a mortgage lender's surveyor values it at. If someone does try to buy it for way more than the mortgage lender thinks it's worth, they won't lend on that amount anyway. Down-valuations are quite common now, so if a house is overpriced then they'll probably find that buyers can't get a mortgage on it.

Good advice.

bookblogger

Hello, I'm back with an update. So we put our offer in for £460k. It was rejected. We then upped it to £470k. At this point, the EA told us that 5 buyers were in the running, three have since pulled out. So that leaves us and the other buyer. EA asked us for our best offer, so we went in at the asking price of £480k. Our offer was rejected, we have no idea by how much. Could be a couple of grand in it, could be £10k plus. who knows, but we don't want to be beaten as this is the house we want!

So on Friday, I called up the EA ready to put in a higher offer. EA explained that the vendor had accepted the other offer and the buyer has until Monday to submit their paperwork (they'd accepted 5 days prior to this).

The EA said, 'I don't want to get your hopes up, but should they not deliver their paperwork by Monday (today), then they will be advising the vendor on next steps'. So he suggested I call him today at 10am for an update. I duly did (at 10.15am lol) and he said that he would be looking to chase the buyer now and he'd call me back in 20 mins.

I have been waiting patiently by the phone. No call back. What could be happening?! 90% of our paperwork is ready. We just need to instruct the lender of the sale price and we're willing to go up to £490k! We've got a solicitor who is waiting for our instruction. We can move fast, but it's hard to know whether or not to chase the EA. We're serious about this purchase and want to know whether we stand....

should I hold tight? or call later this afternoon?

harz99

bookblogger wrote: »

Hello, I'm back with an update. So we put our offer in for £460k. It was rejected. We then upped it to £470k. At this point, the EA told us that 5 buyers were in the running, three have since pulled out. So that leaves us and the other buyer. EA asked us for our best offer, so we went in at the asking price of £480k. Our offer was rejected, we have no idea by how much. Could be a couple of grand in it, could be £10k plus. who knows, but we don't want to be beaten as this is the house we want!

So on Friday, I called up the EA ready to put in a higher offer. EA explained that the vendor had accepted the other offer and the buyer has until Monday to submit their paperwork (they'd accepted 5 days prior to this).

The EA said, 'I don't want to get your hopes up, but should they not deliver their paperwork by Monday (today), then they will be advising the vendor on next steps'. So he suggested I call him today at 10am for an update. I duly did (at 10.15am lol) and he said that he would be looking to chase the buyer now and he'd call me back in 20 mins.

I have been waiting patiently by the phone. No call back. What could be happening?! 90% of our paperwork is ready. We just need to instruct the lender of the sale price and we're willing to go up to £490k! We've got a solicitor who is waiting for our instruction. We can move fast, but it's hard to know whether or not to chase the EA. We're serious about this purchase and want to know whether we stand....

should I hold tight? or call later this afternoon?

Sorry, but that sounds like you are being played by the EA and/or the vendor, they know your really interested and the price will keep going up. Just my twopenneth.