How much should my first offer be?

chrisp2281

Hi All,

I am hoping to buy a house in the next couple of months. I have been looking at houses priced between 290,000 and 345,000. I was wondering what price I should be looking to go in at. I would think a good place to start should be less 25%. I know the auctioneer will prefer to see me spend more so how do I know when they are making up that there is a higher offer?

Thanks,

C

Dades

You never really know if they are making stuff up, tbh.

All you can do is put in a bid, ensure the vendors are aware of it, and ask the EA to let you know of any other offers. Generally as the process goes on, it should become clear if there really is another offer. The EA will change the story, or they keep calling you, or they just mention "interest" if there's something dodgy going on. Time reveals all.

25% is a bit cheeky unless the house is vastly overvalued, I think. 20% off is probably the least I'd offer consider offering for a house I was serious enough to make a bid on. There's too many people out there throwing tiny offers that only serve to annoy EAs and vendors alike.

chrisp2281

Thanks for this. I suppose the 35% was just a starter. I assume they would not accept my first offer. I just want to try and get the house for it's true value and not let EA try and inflate the market.

Dades wrote: »

You never really know if they are making stuff up, tbh.

All you can do is put in a bid, ensure the vendors are aware of it, and ask the EA to let you know of any other offers. Generally as the process goes on, it should become clear if there really is another offer. The EA will change the story, or they keep calling you, or they just mention "interest" if there's something dodgy going on. Time reveals all.

25% is a bit cheeky unless the house is vastly overvalued, I think. 20% off is probably the least I'd offer consider offering for a house I was serious enough to make a bid on. There's too many people out there throwing tiny offers that only serve to annoy EAs and vendors alike.

lainey316

Try to get a feel for the different agents pricing policies - some agents price much higher than others for very similar properties; so the discount you apply to opening offer will vary.

chrisp2281

Great. That's a good idea

Supercell

I have bid on a few places in the last couple of months and my policy is to bid what i think will end up after haggling at a fair price regardless of the asking otherwise I think I would get emotionally involved and reckless.

Today we saw our "dream house" (advertised at 270) and my heart is screaming at me to offer the asking right away in case someone else snaps it up.
But my head said its about 10k over priced so bid 25k below the asking and hope to haggle up to what I think is a fair price (around 10k under the asking).

I dunno if this is a sensible system but at least I know I wont have any regrets later.
One house we liked before did go above my "fair price" and we were outbid but i drew a line at the fair price and it went sale agreed the same week we said we are out. I know there was only one other party bidding (the agent said at the time it was just us and one other couple and it seems he was telling the truth) and we lost out by 3k (the bid that we pulled out at). It was a bit of a sickner but maybe the other party could have kept going if we matched their bid and added a couple of k on so no regrets.