Hello everyone

Hope you dont mind me posting here but I need advice.

We have found the house of our dreams and are desperate to buy it. However we were basing our initial offer of £275,000 (asking price of £299,995) on us getting about £215 - £220 for ours as it was valued earlier in the year at 225 and 229.

We have now had another 2 agents and they have said we will get between 200 and 210 meaning we can only offer a max of 262,500 do you think its worth offering this or do you think they will think we are wasting their time?

Dont want to folk out for a HIPP and registration fees with an agent only to be flatly rejected as we wont move if we cant have this particular house.

What do you think? Anyone been in a similar position?

Thanks
Becky

HI BEcky

How long's it been on the market? The longer it's been on the more likely you are to have a low offer accepted, especially if they want to get moving quickly (eg before Christmas). Has the price been dropped at all? What sort of prices have houses in that street sold for recently - is £299k a good value price (ie priced to sell) or is it a high price (ie priced to accept a lower offer of fair value). Have they already found somewhere to move to - if so they will definitely be anxious to sell so they don't lose out on that property.

Personally, I"d probably offer £250k and see what their response is. If they reject, you get the chance to ask the agent what you think they'd accept. If they don't say, you could go off and have another think and then go back a few days later with an offer of £260k or so and let them know it's your best offer and you won't be going any higher. Even if they reject that, you can leave it on the table for them to come back to later if they get no other offers. You could then get your house on the market and see what you get - if you got enough to increase your offer again, then that's always an option.

But the downside here is that if your house isn't even on the market yet, then you aren't in a good procedable position so that could affect your chances of having a low offer accepted. It would take you a couple of weeks to get onto the market and could then take you months to sell yours, so why would they accept a low offer when there's no guarantee it's going to go ahead? THe most likely chance of them accepting a low offer will be if they think they aren't likely to get anything else and the whole thing will be able to move quickly.

HTH

Jo x

Hi,

A lot of agents wouldnt accept an offer on a house, if you dont have an offer made on yours, as you wont be in any immediate position to buy the house. It would just cause a huge chain with no end in sight. I would get your house on the market and see what the interest there is in that before making an offer on the house you want. We were in this position a few years back, and luckily we did manage to sell our house the next day and bought the house we wanted, but the housing market was a lot better back then!

But if you are in a position to make an offer, I would offer slightly less than the max you can afford, that way if it is rejected you still have a little bit of room to increase your offer.