Advice on making an offer please?

zipee

I would like to make an offer on a house that is nearly 3yrs on the market. I have been following it that length of time on net. It went sale agreed once and fell through. There seem to have been 2 problems with it.

1) They always looked for too much and would only lower price when really prices would have just dropped further and it would end up priced too highly again.
2) It has a disaster of an attic conversion. Lethal stairs and rickety looking room up there. Also a lean to that would probably be better pulled down altgether.

So I want to make an offer but it is about 100k under what they are looking for. It would leave me with about 40K to undo the attic conversion and all the "house that jack built" extras they put on. But the house itself is nice if it was put back to the original house.

Now my query is - how would you go about it? I could possibly go up another 20k but that is it. I am a cash buyer but actually can't get an additional mortgage so it is all I have.

I was thinking of actually writing a letter to the vendor sympathising with how frustrated they must be after almost 3yrs. Explain my circumstances and that while the offer is on the low side compared to what they want that I would not mess them around and could close very quickly.

It might seem extreme but I personally think the Estate Agent should be dishing them some serious home truths if they want to sell. He did say he has already suggested they undo the attic conversion.

So my question is..........would a letter help or piss off the vendor more??? Would you trust the EA to "sell" your offer. I know they want this house gone too.

Any advice on how to proceed.

The_Conductor

Would the letter help- or piss them off?
Who knows- different people will react differently to these type things.
From the limited information in your post about how they are following the market downwards, but always priced on the high side of comparable property- it would seem to me that they would likely reject your offer out of hand.
If they were serious about selling- they'd have made more of an effort at this stage.

This is all generalisations- as I don't know anything about where the property is, what sort of property it is, other property for sale in the locality- or indeed what motivations the vendor have to sell. There are too many unknowns.

I'd suggest making a time limited offer- a final time limited offer- they accept within 'x' amount of time- or you walk. If they don't accept- walk- they've been hanging around 3 years so far- you could be in negotiations with them for the long haul if you don't watch it.

zipee

Well to update......I did the letter and it jumped up and bit me on the ass! :rolleyes: The couple were at the EA door at 9am this morning very upset over the low offer. Thus why the house is on the market 3yrs!

Very sad though that they started looking for €610k 3yrs ago and now is faced with 280-360k max. Their pension (i assume) has disappeared before their eyes and the loss is totally magnified by the fact that they keep refusing reasonable offers waiting for some nut in shining armour to bid above the odds. I wonder if the EA are doing them a service at this point!

Anyway I hope they finally sell it.

smcarrick - thanks for your advice!

Idbatterim

this is so typical of many properties i have seen, at the time of asking 630, they were probably getting offer in the high five hundreds, bet they wish they had taken them now! Op can you link to the property?

RATM

It really is daft watching the place decrease from €610k to €300k having had refused to play ball for €50k under asking at some stage no doubt. OP there isn't a whole lot you can do- sellers will always have a natural tendency to over value their house as to them it is a home that they have lovingly decorated. If the estate agent is not putting them wise to how things are in the current market then he is wasting their time and his own by constantly chasing the downward trend of the market rather than making a break for it.

The property price database is REALLY needed at this point !