Negotiation of the house price

The estate agent called to say he had spoken to the vendor and that he is keen to get moving with things but really not able to go as low as £178,000 as this was our opening offer we weren’t too surprised.

We have upped our offer to £180,000 and this will be our final offer due to the amount of work that is required and also knowing that not many people will be interested in the property. Negotiation of the house price can be a tricky business as too low and the vendor will be offended but you really have to look at the resale value of the property and whether there are other interested parties. Although the agent has said he had another offer I don’t believe this as whilst viewing we were told that no offers had been made. Always ask questions when viewing and always remember the answers, make notes if you are seeing a number of properties in one day so you don’t mix things up.

What will put other buyers off this property is that lack of parking directly outside this house. The work is considerable but the price is too high to be viable for a developer which frankly only leaves other lunatics such as ourselves!

We go on holiday tomorrow for 5 days so if he doesn’t accept we will leave him to think about it until next week. If he isn’t prepared to accept our offer then we will advise the estate agent that we are going to go with our second choice which is £30,000 less to buy….watch this space.

Making an offer on your first home

So on sunday we worked out the renovation costs of the properties but came to the conclusion that the one we really wanted was the larger of the 2, of course that makes it the most expensive one as well. What really attracted us to this property, apart from the room dimensions, was the original victorian features it still contains, it has beautiful original marble fireplaces, the original ceiling roses and cornicing (currently covered in canary yellow gloss paint!!!) the original sash windows are sadly rotten through and will need replacing and the house has damp but that’s not unusual in victorian properties. We will also need to rewire and replumb the entire property so its not a job for the faint hearted.

The property is on the market for £189,000 and we think a minimum renovation cost is going to be around £30,000 and that’s with us doing most of the work so taking this into account we decided we would offer £178,000.

Monday morning arrives and I call the estate agent and discuss our situation and the state of the property. As we don’t have a property to sell we are in a nice strong position for purchasing I put our offer forward. The Estate agent says he thinks the vendor is looking for more than this but as he hasn’t sold it yet he will see what he says.

Later on yesterday he called me to say he’d left messages for the vendor to call him but still waiting to hear back.

This brings us on to today, I called the estate agent because we are off on holiday tomorrow and would like to know today as we can’t guarantee we can be contacted again until monday next week. The agent hasn’t yet spoken to the vendor as he was with another client when the vendor called him back.

Its a nail biting time as the more we think about it the more we want this property and while I am sure we will get it and that the price is the only stumbling block, we also want to try and get it sorted so we can be in by Christmas and it is still theoretically possible but every delay at this stage will make it less likely.

So fingers crossed (and toes as well!)

So making an offer on your first home is easy the waiting to hear back is much harder and I have to resist the temptation to call and up the offer since I know it hasn’t been rejected yet. Sometimes you will hear back almost immediately and that is a much nicer scenario for your peace of mind!

House viewing frenzy

We are relocating and so the viewing of properties is a challenge to fit in and have to be all arranged on one day so a good relationship with the estate agents is recommended. We knew how many rooms we needed so we were able to reduce our list of properties to view down to 10!

So after a lot of calls I managed to get viewings in for 8 properties and 1 had been taken off the market which only left 1 to arrange typically of course this one was our favourite. It was favourite because not only did it have enough bedrooms for us but it also had a garage and workshop area which would be very useful for us.

It took 8 days of calling every day to finally get the viewing booked in, you do sometimes wonder if people really want to sell when they can’t even be bothered to be contacted by their estate agent!

Anyway saturday finally arrived and we got to the first property which was the favourite on paper. It’s a victorian terraced property and needed some work what was most disappointing about the property was how dark it was inside every room. The main living area was in a lower ground floor and so inevitably it was dark, the layout was wrong and the only bathroom was on this floor so if you were sleeping on the top floor then its a really long journey to the loo in the middle of the night although we could sort this out it would mean losing a bedroom and therefore devaluing the house so not a sensible option longterm.

Then we discovered that the only outside space was overlooking a unmade road where lots of cars park and was only big enough for 2 chairs…in other words it was tiny and not somewhere you’d want to spend time. We decided in the end that this was a deal breaker for us, the garage just didn’t make up for this.

We then made our way around the other 8 houses all in varying states of repair from those ready to move into which were appealing simply because of the ease of just moving in and furnishing our first home together. Never ones to take an easy option our 2 favourite properties were the 2 that needed the most work. We spent 5.5 hours viewing and then had to rush home for a family get together. Sunday was spent working out the renovation costs of the 2 shortlisted properties.

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