Haggling over price of house

jos_kel

We have gone sale agreed on our house. The same estate agent is involved in a house we're actively bidding on. It's getting to the stage where there's still a gap to be bridged. We've made our final 'walk-away' offer.
Just wondering would it be uncommon to ask the estate agent to lower the commission on our house from 1.5% to 1% or more to the point would the just laugh.
Everyone might win out of it.

April 73

Would it bridge the gap? If so why not ask?
Is there another bidder? If there is the EA will sell the house regardless to you or someone else.
But he might like two sales tied together.

jos_kel

April 73 wrote: »

Would it bridge the gap? If so why not ask?
Is there another bidder? If there is the EA will sell the house regardless to you or someone else.
But he might like two sales tied together.

House was on the market for a long time before we put a bid which was somewhat realistic to the sellers. We have the highest bid at moment. EA says there has been other viewers (although I take all this with a pinch of salt)

handlemaster

jos_kel wrote: »

House was on the market for a long time before we put a bid which was somewhat realistic to the sellers. We have the highest bid at moment. EA says there has been other viewers (although I take all this with a pinch of salt)

Tell him one week and the offer is off. Be prepared to walk away.

Butters1979

handlemaster wrote: »

Tell him one week and the offer is off. Be prepared to walk away.

Ha the vendor will call your bluff and you'll be back to square one.

handlemaster

Butters1979 wrote: »

Ha the vendor will call your bluff and you'll be back to square one.

Thats why I said be prepared to walk away. Its a game on both sides

jos_kel

Butters1979 wrote: »

Ha the vendor will call your bluff and you'll be back to square one.

And the vendor will too.
I suspect, more than likely correctly that the vendor may be more flexible.
The EA will only reveal their hand and step more onto our side if we're walking away.

Butters1979

jos_kel wrote: »

And the vendor will too.
I suspect, more than likely correctly that the vendor may be more flexible.
The EA will only reveal their hand and step more onto our side if we're walking away.

No he won't. The vendor knows well that if he came back in 2 or 3 weeks the buyer would most likely still be there and still willing to buy.

This hard ball stuff doesn't work, people don't like being backed into a corner over something so important and will most likely not fold like that unless they are desperate, which it doesn't sound like. Also if I had 2 people with the same offer I'd give it to the one who didn't try to force me like that.

People who say 'give them a week or it's off the table' watch too much TV. Has anyone ever seen that actually work?

handlemaster wrote: »

Thats why I said be prepared to walk away. Its a game on both sides

I agree, but playing hardball like that can cause these things to collapse when constructive negotiating works a lot better. You are in negotiation looking for mutual agreement. You are not enemies.

But to answer the question on asking the estate agent to reduce his commission. I'm not sure if it is uncommon, I would say it is very uncommon at a guess though.
Again it's all negotiating, the EA might accept that to close the deals rather than go on with it. The quicker the bidding, the better for the EA. You can ask. Let us know what they say.

newacc2015

jos_kel wrote: »

And the vendor will too.
I suspect, more than likely correctly that the vendor may be more flexible.
The EA will only reveal their hand and step more onto our side if we're walking away.

Read freakeconomics and see if your opinion still holds. Basically there is a chapter in the book, that says an estate agent will tend to sell a house belonging to a client, quicker than if they were selling their own. As they dont have as much interest in waiting for a higher price with a low rate of commission.

OP look at it this way. If you have an offer of €300k on the table. The estate agent will get €4500 in commission. You want him to take €3000 in commission. He is better of going to someone offering €280,000 and taking that. He will get €4200 in commission for that.

It might sound like bad move on the part of the estate agent. But they are business. They want to make as much as possible themselves. There is no benefit to them for taking your reduced commission. They could just tell the seller you didnt get mortgage approval and take the other party interested

April 73

Except that the OP wants the EA to lower the commission on the house that he is selling through the same agent.
Different scenario.

jos_kel

April 73 wrote: »

Except that the OP wants the EA to lower the commission on the house that he is selling through the same agent.
Different scenario.

That's the point exactly. It might suit them to close both deals. The house we're selling and the house we're buying.
However, the gap we're trying to bridge is 10k, so the point is really a moot one.
Might sound like a workable situation but we're maxed out and they won't budge, which needless to say is their privilege.

newacc2015

jos_kel wrote: »

That's the point exactly. It might suit them to close both deals. The house we're selling and the house we're buying.
However, the gap we're trying to bridge is 10k, so the point is really a moot one.
Might sound like a workable situation but we're maxed out and they won't budge, which needless to say is their privilege.

The estate agent still has to sell both houses. He is still having to do twice the work. He might as well get the other party interest in the house OP you want to buy to up their offer by say €2k and the estate agent will get 50% more commission from the other party.

Other than you saving them maybe a few more hours work. Why should they take a 50% cut on their commission? They will sell the house maybe a fraction less to someone else and get a 50% increase in commission

jos_kel

newacc2015 wrote: »

The estate agent still has to sell both houses. He is still having to do twice the work. He might as well get the other party interest in the house OP you want to buy to up their offer by say €2k and the estate agent will get 50% more commission from the other party.

Other than you saving them maybe a few more hours work. Why should they take a 50% cut on their commission? They will sell the house maybe a fraction less to someone else and get a 50% increase in commission

Ok, that's answers my question then but it appears we're the only bidders and it's been on the market for quite a while. Previous bids were just laughed at.

April 73

The OP is asking the EA to reduce the commission on the house that the OP is selling.
The OP can't ask him to reduce the commission on the house that he wants to buy.

I don't agree that there is no benefit in this deal to the EA. They are most interested in getting deals across the line. Tieing two sales together means commission on two sales that go to completion. Quite a few sales seem to be falling through at the moment because people don't have the funds to complete.

We were in this scenario earlier this year. The EA who sold our house also sold us the one we bought.

The trouble with the OP's situation is that even if the EA reduces the commission on the sale of his own house - the gap can't be bridged. Moot point.

jos_kel

April 73 wrote: »

The OP is asking the EA to reduce the commission on the house that the OP is selling.
The OP can't ask him to reduce the commission on the house that he wants to buy.

I don't agree that there is no benefit in this deal to the EA. They are most interested in getting deals across the line. Tieing two sales together means commission on two sales that go to completion. Quite a few sales seem to be falling through at the moment because people don't have the funds to complete.

We were in this scenario earlier this year. The EA who sold our house also sold us the one we bought.

The trouble with the OP's situation is that even if the EA reduces the commission on the sale of his own house - the gap can't be bridged. Moot point.

Yeah I'd be very surprised if EA wouldn't be interested in such a scenario, if it made it possible to close deals, which isn't possible in our case.

riclad

I would not bother asking the agent to reduce the commission,
just wait and see what happens ,
there,s no point in bidding say 150k on a house if you have only 135k .
How much is the gap,
10k ,more , maybe a crdit union loan might cover it.

jos_kel

April 73 wrote: »

Would it bridge the gap? If so why not ask?
Is there another bidder? If there is the EA will sell the house regardless to you or someone else.
But he might like two sales tied together.

Think I might mention this to the EA. It's getting to the nitty gritty. They might laugh but could suit everyone. By my calculations if they reduce commission on sale of our house from 1.5% to 1%, it'll free up 2k and we could throw in another 2k, so that's 4k.
Might sound like little, but might just get deal over line and suit everyone.

Call me Al

Butters1979 wrote: »

No he won't. The vendor knows well that if he came back in 2 or 3 weeks the buyer would most likely still be there and still willing to buy.

This hard ball stuff doesn't work, people don't like being backed into a corner over something so important and will most likely not fold like that unless they are desperate, which it doesn't sound like. Also if I had 2 people with the same offer I'd give it to the one who didn't try to force me like that.

People who say 'give them a week or it's off the table' watch too much TV. Has anyone ever seen that actually work?



I agree, but playing hardball like that can cause these things to collapse when constructive negotiating works a lot better. You are in negotiation looking for mutual agreement. You are not enemies.

But to answer the question on asking the estate agent to reduce his commission. I'm not sure if it is uncommon, I would say it is very uncommon at a guess though.
Again it's all negotiating, the EA might accept that to close the deals rather than go on with it. The quicker the bidding, the better for the EA. You can ask. Let us know what they say.

Has it actually worked you ask? Yes it has, and I'm sitting in my house ten years later as a consequence of that approach.
We gave them (a very argumentative family) via the EA, a week, and explained that we had already sale agreed our own house so were not interested in faffing around with bids and counter bids for weeks on end.
We gave one full final bid and said we would walk away. And we were prepared to do exactly that.

So scoff if you feel like it but it can work.