are estate agents obliged to pass on offers and does this sound unreasonable?

boat_girl

Hello
My hubbie and i recently viewed a house that we really liked, we could do loads with it and we could stay in it many years.
The asking price is £155000 but we put in an offer of £120000 and the estate agent virtually laughed in our faces and refused to even put the offer forward unless we offered at least £135000 as a starting point. We said we would think about it and get back to her. We thought about it and decided to put the same offer forward again but in writing and have still not heard anything are we being realistic? We know that we wouldn't get it for our offer but looked at it is as a starting point and did stress that to the agent. The house itself is not all that special but has a large garden backed onto by fields and is quite large as it was ex council. It needs loads doing as has not been touched since the 70's.
We are in a great position with a largish deposit and could go to the asking price but do not want to stretch ourselves. Any advice on how to proceed?

puddy

house prices have gone down by 4%, not 20%!!!!

JonnyBravo

boat_girl wrote: »

Any advice on how to proceed?

Decide how much you want it.

You can't force someone to accept 120k same as they can't force you to offer more.

Estate agent will pass on the offer don't worry, but equally they will prob have an idea of what the seller is willing to accept. Estate agents will be keen to close ANY deal at the moment, they are doing so few deals they're all under pessure.

boat_girl

thank you for that,
what I didn't say in the original post is that the house is empty, has been on the market since November and has not had much interest at all.

tradetime

Not being an estate agent, I couldn't answer that question categorically, but in the current climate where, shall we say "substantially lower" offers may be tendered, I'd probably tell my estate agent at the time of sale that I am not prepared to consider offers below £XXXXX and thus don't waste my time with them. I'd imagine under such an arrangement the estate agent would respect my instruction, but I could be wrong.
An offer 22% below asking would fit into that category for me.

boat_girl

jenner wrote: »

house prices have gone down by 4%, not 20%!!!!

we appreciate that but if you had read the post properly, we stressed that would be a starting offer. I may be wrong but I assume in negotiation you don't put your top price forward right at the begining.

JonnyBravo

boat_girl wrote: »

we appreciate that but if you had read the post properly, we stressed that would be a starting offer. I may be wrong but I assume in negotiation you don't put your top price forward right at the begining.

Quite, but not all negotiation has to be both sides moving towards the middle ground.
Their first move seems to have been to ignore you and see if you come back with something else. Perhaps they're seeing if you're just testing the water or if that really was your one and only offer.

As I said.... decide how much you're willing to pay for it. Don't go above that. You have nothing to lose by moving up a bit now though. It might start discussion. At the moment you have no engagement at all.

merlinthehappypig

jenner wrote: »

house prices have gone down by 4%, not 20%!!!!

I think that sums up exactly what most sellers are thinking when faced with what they consider to be an unreasonably low offer.

This needs putting into context considering the state of the market, though.

If the Nationwide figures are to be believed then all sellers need to reduce the price of their house by 4.4% compared with last years prices. If that happened it would simply level out the playing field - it wouldn't make their house any more saleable in the current market.

There are hardly any buyers out there in a proceedable position. Those that are can pick and choose what they want to make offfers on.

For any house to stand a chance of being sold in the currrent climate it has to be either truly exceptional and offer something unique or undercut it's rivals by a considerable margin.

Assuming that you merely have to reduce the price by the Nationwide's figure to sell is just a fantasy and sellers will simply end up chasing the market down.

I've seen a few sell recently and they have all made 15%+ cuts in order to stand out.

That is the only way to attract a buyer at present.

Kez100

I think that sort of offer could work on the right property and it seems you have so far not chosen the right one. Keep looking and don't fall in love with a place if you want a bargain as you have to be prepared to keep trying.

Empty is good (repossesion may be better). Requiring work is good. Not much interest is good. November isn't though - that's not a terribly long.

tradetime

merlinthehappypig wrote: »

I think that sums up exactly what most sellers are thinking when faced with what they consider to be an unreasonably low offer.

This needs putting into context considering the state of the market, though.

If the Nationwide figures are to be believed then all sellers need to reduce the price of their house by 4.4% compared with last years prices. If that happened it would simply level out the playing field - it wouldn't make their house any more saleable in the current market.

There are hardly any buyers out there in a proceedable position. Those that are can pick and choose what they want to make offfers on.

For any house to stand a chance of being sold in the currrent climate it has to be either truly exceptional and offer something unique or undercut it's rivals by a considerable margin.

Assuming that you merely have to reduce the price by the Nationwide's figure to sell is just a fantasy and sellers will simply end up chasing the market down.

I've seen a few sell recently and they have all made 15%+ cuts in order to stand out.

That is the only way to attract a buyer at present.

This is true merlin, but you sound like you are assuming that everybody who puts a house on the market has to sell it, people put their property on the market for all sorts of reasons, those that have to sell will drop their price, those that don't won't. My sister put hers on the market last June, couldn't get a buyer at the price she wanted so she simply took it off the market.

beingjdc

jenner wrote: »

house prices have gone down by 4%, not 20%!!!!

Actually they've gone down more like 7-8% from the peak last Summer. Given that on average sellers used to get 94% of asking price, then if the asking price is based on the peak values, a reasonable price right now would be 15% off the asking. Which makes 20% off the asking a perfectly reasonable starting offer.