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Making a very low offer

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  • mije1983
    mije1983 Posts: 3,665 Forumite
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    Trixsie1989 wrote: »
    The agent has to put forward all offers to vendor...

    Unless the vendor has said 'I don't want to be bothered with any offers under £230k, so you can just reject these out of hand'.

    tearfulheart wrote: »
    the Zoopla estimate for that particular property is £194,000.


    I'd be ignoring any Zoopla 'estimate'. All it does is give a wide ball park figure. And quite often 2 identical properties can have totally different 'valuations', and don't match up to what the market says they are worth.
  • ThePants999
    ThePants999 Posts: 1,748 Forumite
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    tearfulheart wrote: »
    I did see the current owners during the viewing, they said have somewhere else to move to "which is the problem". I'm not sure how desperate they are from that slip of the tongue.
    They might well be desperate, but the wrong kind of desperate for you. A previous sale fallen through, onward chain already complete and an "offers over" listing all suggests to me that £240K is what they need to be able to afford their onwards purchase, so I'll bet you have very little luck with a substantially lower offer.
  • Crashy_Time
    Crashy_Time Posts: 13,386 Forumite
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    MysteryMe wrote: »
    I'd forget about what happened 2 years ago. You are not buying then, you are buying now.

    What you do need to concentrate on is what flats are being sold for now and if a previous sale has fallen through because of mortgage difficulties that could indicate that the valuation was below the offer price.

    You can offer what you like and without explanation but to be taken seriously as a prospective purchaser it would be best to put forward a reasoned case for offering such a figure.


    I wouldn`t :rotfl:85k mark up in 2 years on a run of the mill flat in some apartment block? Let them sweat, or you will lose money on this down the road.
  • missis_amber
    missis_amber Posts: 92 Forumite
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    Do people really factor in how much the seller paid for the property before making an offer?

    I bought my property in 2011 for £113k. Estate agent has valued it at £170k. So potential buyers might think that's a £57k mark up. But it doesn't take into account that it was a probate property that hadn't had any work done on it for what seemed like 40 years! I spent well over £30k to make it habitable. So that's really a £27k mark up.

    If it's valued right for what it is at that moment in time it shouldn't matter what the seller paid for it, should it?
  • AdrianC
    AdrianC Posts: 42,189 Forumite
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    tearfulheart wrote: »
    Does the estate agent have to respond to be or can they ignore me?
    Trixsie1989 wrote: »
    The agent has to put forward all offers to vendor...
    Yes, but...

    If the vendor has said to the agent "Definitely won't accept anything under £230k, so don't even waste our time with phoning them through", then that counts as a vendor instruction, so the agent is within their rights to just file those offers in the round file.
  • missis_amber
    missis_amber Posts: 92 Forumite
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    OP how much do apartments there sell for? You don't really specify why you want to make such a low offer.
  • kinger101
    kinger101 Posts: 6,284 Forumite
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    Is it even a realistic offer? If you know it will be flat-out rejected, it might be better to keep your powder dry with that agent. What they paid for it two years ago is irrelevant. You need to look at the prices of recent sales for similar properties.

    NB - 2 years ago, it may also have been purchased on a short lease, which has now been extended.
    "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance" - Confucius
  • ACG
    ACG Posts: 23,727 Forumite
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    It really frustrates me when people say this:
    the current owners paid: £155,000 2 years ago
    What they bought it for is completely irrelevant. They could have bought it off family, it could have needed a lot of work doing it to it, the vendors at the time may have needed a quick sale and so on.

    Zoopla is showing a low figure because it was presumably bought cheaply 2 years ago.

    I bought a property 5 years ago. I spent 2-3 years renovating the property and it very nearly doubled in price in those 2-3 years. Not because it was a fantastic area, but because I spent money and time doing it up on top of my full time job.
    You can put in an offer of whatever you like, but with those reasons for doing so you can expect the agent/vendor to either ignore you or reject your offer.

    When I sold the house mentioned above, I put "offers over", 2 people came back and offered me the asking price. I would have actually accepted something a little below the offers over price, but not 20% below.
    I am a Mortgage Adviser
    You should note that this site doesn't check my status as a mortgage adviser, so you need to take my word for it. This signature is here as I follow MSE's Mortgage Adviser Code of Conduct. Any posts on here are for information and discussion purposes only and shouldn't be seen as financial advice.
  • tearfulheart
    tearfulheart Posts: 13 Forumite
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    missis_amber wrote: »
    OP how much do apartments there sell for? You don't really specify why you want to make such a low offer.

    The average selling price for apartments there in the last 12 months is £220,382 (though this figure is likely skewed by 1 bed flats that sell for around ~£150k)

    Looking at the last 12 month selling prices for the 2 beds, the prices range from £230k-£265k.

    Because I'm expecting the vendor to reject this initial offer, I wanted to start lower to give more room to make incrementally higher offers. I'm expecting to pay around £230k, but wondered whether it was worth risking starting off with an extremely lower offer just to try my chances.
  • tearfulheart
    tearfulheart Posts: 13 Forumite
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    I understand there can sometimes be back and forth with the vendor and the buyer on the price. If my target was £230k, what would people suggest as a more reasonable initial offer? I'm guessing if I did put in £230k I'm at potentially at disadvantage and would end up meeting halfway instead at £235k.
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