Making offer on house

[steve1975l]

Def check zoopla for the first listing date, if more than a couple of months ago the sellers are more than likely open to offers. If sales previously have also fallen through then i would say this is a good time to test the water with an offer as i would be just wanting to move on swiftly.

Depends on the demographics of the area, employment, average wage in that area, desirability etc, all these factors can determine how much an offer will be accepted or you could get like we did sellers who know what they want and will not budge and just wait for the right offer to come in.

Agents can be sneeky, we bought a house which needed doing up, agent said he thought 20k to refurb, when i offered 20k under the asking price i was met with oh, no i wont even put that forward to the vendor?

Good luck.

Just because it needs £20k of work doesn't mean you are going to get £20k off as the estate agent has priced it accordingly. He has to pass the offer on though, it can start the ball rolling.

[whisky]

True, but the agent said he wouldnt even put the offer forward to the vendor.

We got 12k off in the end and it only needed 10k of work

[Dominic]

It's all dependant on so many factors - if the house is in a desirable area and is in demand, offering low could mean not being taken seriously and someone else coming in at nearer the asking price could find themselves entering effective negotiations to secure the house.

I note the advice above not to get hung up re the odd thousand. Ours was up for £172k and we started at £165k and it got knocked back immediately. When the next offer of around £168k got declined I was all ready to dig my heels in, but it was in one of the best areas of town and was unusual in having parking too which was a must have for us.

Houses around here don't hang around for long and we learned after that it had had a lot of viewings.

How much to spend on it is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. We did a lot of work which was to return the house to it's former self plus extension with reclaimed bricks at around £1 each 😳. This could have been done so much cheaper had we wanted to do it on the cheap. We could also have spent 10's of thousands on a kitchen had we so desired. But obviously you don't necessarily get all that back if you sell on.

Obviously damp and rot are 'must do' expenditure, but bathrooms and kitchens are dependant on taste and budget.