First Offer - Strategy

Elliott.T123

I don't know if I am the odd one out here or not, there seem to be a lot of posters recently who have long methods for coming to an offer price or who send the vendor a whole spiel about why the figure is fair.

To me I have a figure in mind when the house goes on the market that is what I will accept, anything under is a no go. If I find a dream house in the meantime and the price of that means I could drop my selling price a little then I may consider but otherwise the accepting point is pre-determined and no letter is going to change that.

It has worked fine so far, two houses sold, both in less than a week. One initial offer at asking the second initial offer £10k below, my cut off was £5k, went back saying that and second offer came in 2 hours later at agreed figure.

Buying and selling is a business decision, if doing research etc and adding emotion helps you then great, but be prepared the other party has no emotions involved and wants X figure no matter what. 

Albermarle

Buying and selling is a business decision, if doing research etc and adding emotion helps you then great, but be prepared the other party has no emotions involved and wants X figure no matter what. 

On the other side, Vendors can be  emotionally attached to their house, and have a skewed idea of how much their house is worth.

jimbog

What did similar houses in the area (not street) sell for in the last year or so? Using data from 25 years ago and extrapolating from that isn’t really  helpful 

MysteryMe

Your calculations may be useful to you but they are based on some assumption and square meterage is again arbitrary unless every single property has an identical room placement and size because it's not just about square meters it is about usable square meters. So I would just offer what you consider to be fair and leave it at that. The only things the vendor is interested in is your offer and what your proceedable status is.

bobster2

As a seller - I wouldn't be interested in your reasoning. In fact - the longer and more convoluted the reasoning - the more likely I would be to ignore your offer.
My only concern would be - is your initial offer close enough to what I hoped to achieve so that I could reasonably expect to get there through negotiation.

Houses sell on average for 3-5% below asking. So for this house £475k to £485k might be typical.

With an initial offer of £460k as a seller I'd think that was close enough to have a good chance of negotiating you up to £475k-£485k.

Smalltownhypocrite

Albermarle said:

Buying and selling is a business decision, if doing research etc and adding emotion helps you then great, but be prepared the other party has no emotions involved and wants X figure no matter what. 

On the other side, Vendors can be  emotionally attached to their house, and have a skewed idea of how much their house is worth.

Ok but thats the same as business.

I have worked in the arts so know this all too well.

Say I spend 10 years studying and practicing art. You decide want a picture drawn up as a gift for you parents anniversary. You look around lots of artists and decide my style is 'the one' that suits the style you want doing. You then decide that my asking price of £500 (after a £25 discount) is too much so you are going to 'make up' some math using other different artist prices from 20 years ago to tell me my work is 'factually' only worth £450... I'll send you packing and all that happens is you won't get what YOU wanted.

I have what the buyer wants/needs... it costs me nothing to not sell my skill for under its worth. 

Same with a house unless they are about to be repossessed or court ordered in divorce etc... they do not have to sell, worst case scenario for them is they continue to live in their home forever without the hassle of moving (really no loss) and it continues to exist as their investment until a time they get what they want. Its the BUYER that loses out by playing silly games over the price of the thing THEY want.