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for those with there house for sale how low are the silly offers coming in at ?

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Comments

  • had my 1 bed flat up for sale for only 5 days before accepting an offer of 167k, it was on for 169k. The place I bought was up for 182k and I got it for 172k, so was well chuffed all round really. :D

    Well done.
  • had my 1 bed flat up for sale for only 5 days before accepting an offer of 167k, it was on for 169k. The place I bought was up for 182k and I got it for 172k, so was well chuffed all round really. :D

    Umm doesn’t that set alarm bells ringing, that you had it on the market too cheaply though? If I had that sort of an offer after 5 days on a property in this climate, I would certainly take a good look at the market and see if it was under priced.
  • There is huge discrepancy between asking and selling prices because there's huge discrepancy in valuations; few vendors are actually greedy, more that often they are not very well-informed. Hardly surprising, given you only sell a house a few times in your entire lifetime.

    When we were selling our flat in April, we called in Garrington Homefinders (the company owned by Phil Spencer from Location X3) to advise us, in the hope of selling without estate agents. At the time they didn't have anyone on their books looking in our postcode, so they weren't interested in our flat, but they gave us a lot of their time and advice, probably in the hope that we'd commission them to search on our behalf for our new house (which we might yet do).

    A top tip they gave us on finding the 'right' sale price (now, of course, it sounds obvious, but at the time it was news to us):

    1) Ask as many estate agents as you have time to consult within a 7 day period to value, on the basis that each will give a different price. Pricing is fundamentally just guesswork, even when based on historical comparables. (ETA - the 7 day slot reflects a snapshot of the market at a particular moment in time. If you hadn't received any offers over a couple of months then you'd probably need to repeat the exercise).

    2) Discount the highest and lowest price and find the mean average of the others.

    3) Appoint the agent who most fills you with confidence, not the one who priced closest to the the mean average (we went with Winkworth because they sent the most senior negotiator in the office to value, and were the only agents who turned up with a printout of local and historical comparable prices).

    4) Tell the agent the mean average price you want to ask, and let them know the absolute minimum price at which you will sell.

    5) Agree down the sale commission to 1% up to and including your minimum sale price.

    6) Incentive the rest - 2% of the portion achieved from the minimum up to and including the asking price, and 40% of anything achieved over the sale price.

    We called in six agents and the lowest valuation was £650k and the highest £830k. Excluding these, the mean average was £800k bang on.

    We decided to price slightly under the mean at £795k to ensure as much interest as possible on internet search engines, and had an offer at the asking price within three weeks, although it took the buyer two weeks to raise his offer from £775k (which was our minimum).

    Interestingly, even at the height of the market and with that whopping agent incentive, we had no offers immediately at the asking price, and none over.

    I know this story is only anecdotal but I hope it gives you some idea as to whether you've pitched your expectations at the right level.:think: :D
  • Running_Horse
    Running_Horse Posts: 11,809 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    chriz1000 wrote: »
    Umm doesn’t that set alarm bells ringing, that you had it on the market too cheaply though? If I had that sort of an offer after 5 days on a property in this climate, I would certainly take a good look at the market and see if it was under priced.
    There's no pleasing some people. We sold our house for full asking price on day one in a busy market, and were glad. Guy in the next road did the same, insisted the two bidders went to sealed bids, one refused, so vendor told EA to put house back on the market for an extra ten grand. We have moved and settled in, his house is still for sale in a falling market. In future years we will not lose any sleep about the little extra we could have forced. A house is for living in, not speculation.
    Been away for a while.
  • fimonkey
    fimonkey Posts: 1,238 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Well what an interesting thread! Please don't be put off by the replies Lizzie - keep us informed of your progress please.

    Anecdotally, we sold my mother's house in Leeds (ex council) for 83K (2K above asking price) in May 2007. We thought we'd done well cos even back then the news was all 'crash crash crash'. ..... Same houses now going for 95K!!! Go figure, that part of the world clearly doesn't log onto MSE..... From the proceeds of my mother's house (inheritence) I hoped to buy my own overpriced shed in Dorset, but between Nov 2006 and May 2007 I was completely priced out of the market. Properties I was interested in rose by 10% in that period alone! Only in the last month have they remained constant.

    So my own thoughts here are that yes a correction/stagnation is probably on it's way, and even here in some places but not all (expecially south Leeds by all accounts). It's stagnated in Dorset, but is still 10% over what I can afford. Just a drop to prices this time last year would place me back in the market, and when that happens I will buy. I am not alone with this sentiment so in my pinion it wil only take wither a small fall, or a lnger stagnation to allow deposits/salaries to catch up again, and all will be better than ppl are predicting.

    Lizzie, this time last year, what did similar houses sell for? WOuld you be willing to accept last years price?
  • Spendless
    Spendless Posts: 24,807 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    In summer 2005 my neighbours put their bungalow up for sale at £250K. Someone put in an offer of between £220-230K (don't know exact amount). It was refused. Today the bungalow is still for sale. Last time it was in property guide it was at £185K. They've told another neighbour that they now wish they'd taken that first offer. Some other friends of mine put their bungalow on market at £320K, dropped it £20K within weeks, and took it off market after about 15 months. No-one having gone round to view it.
  • SquatNow wrote: »
    The OPs house is WORTH £115k, as that's what someone is prepared to pay her for it. If someone offered her £500k then it would be WORTH £500k.

    I tell you what SquatNow, I'll offer you £10 for you sporty convertable car.
    That's what I'm offering, so that must be what it is worth.
    But wait a minute, if you do really have a sporty convertable car, then maybe its worth more to you than that and hence you wont sell it

    You can't simply say a property is only worth what an offer is made on it, it doesn't work that way.

    Some people will offer low and if the circumstances are right at the time they may get a bargain.
    Some people will offer well above the property valuation to secure the property

    I could agree with you if you were to say a property is only worth what a buyer and a seller mutually agree upon, until then there is a difference between the buyer and seller as to the worthiness of the property
    :wall:
    What we've got here is....... failure to communicate.
    Some men you just can't reach.
    :wall:
  • Back in 1989, I decided that the housing market was due a correction and so put my flat on the market with an asking price of £49,950.

    The next day I received a cash offer of £45,000 - 20% below asking price. I rejected it out of hand.

    I finally sold the flat six months later - for £42,000!

    My gut feeling is that we are now at exactly the same point in the cycle.
  • wii_man1
    wii_man1 Posts: 154 Forumite
    Walter_J wrote: »
    Back in 1989, I decided that the housing market was due a correction and so put my flat on the market with an asking price of £49,950.

    The next day I received a cash offer of £45,000 - 20% below asking price. I rejected it out of hand.

    I finally sold the flat six months later - for £42,000!

    My gut feeling is that we are now at exactly the same point in the cycle.

    20% are you sure
  • The 8x salary mortgages aren't offered so freely anymore so I think you will receive more cautious offers. 3/4 years ago no-one offer below asking, which IMO was more insane than offering significantly below. People are now forced to haggle and after only 4 days at Christmas I'd say you were lucky to get an offer at all. My friend's flat has been on the market since July and she's still not had an offer.
    £4000 challenge

    Currently leftover - £3872.15
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