The misses and i are selling our first house, well, flat. Having had it on the market for a few weeks now and with a few viewings we have had our first offer, now i would like to come back with a counter offer as it's £6500 less than the asking price but my other half wants to accept. Truth be told it's not a bad offer as we had priced the flat a little on the high side but i just don't feel comfortable accepting the first offer from the first people to show interest. The estate agent tells us he has bartered on our behalf and the buyer will not budge on there offer and will walk if we don't accept! Am i just being greedy? Or should we take the money and run (with a tidy profit)?

I think you know it's a good offer - so that kind of answers your own question.

I would accept and get on with it - that's the easy bit as you'll start to find out!...

No way should you accept the first offer! What's the asking price?

The estate agent has no authority to do that unless you instructed him/her either. Maybe they feel it's overvalued and are worried you won't get a better offer?

Never accept the first offer, as anyone in their right mind will not give their best offer straight away.

My thoughts too, even though it's a reasonable offer it's not a great one and it would be silly not to even ask for a little more.

As Jonny says, the estate agent has no right to "barter on your behalf" - you have instructed them to sell your house, not to barter with possible buyers.

sounds to me like they are representing the buyer in an attempt to get you to sell for a few thousand less

The market is gradually picking up and another buyer WILL be along sooner or later

I would (politely) decline their kind offer and say that you are holding out for closer to the asking price. I doubt they will walk for two or three grand (but they might, so be prepared)

My experience has been that things that a priced right do not stay on the market for a few weeks before receiving an offer. Everything I saw at around the right price was sold <1 week

(Milton Keynes - where in Bucks are you?)

Try not to think of the offer as a sum of money but as a percentage of the asking price.

My first boss told me that if you sell your house within the first week then you've undersold it. Although there are exceptions to that statement, there is generally some truth in it. However, that hasn't happened here. You've had it on the market for a few weeks and now have an offer.

Statistically, houses have the best chance of selling within the first 6 weeks of being on the market so it's not surprising that a decent (presumably?) offer has been made within this timeframe.

How reasonable do you think the asking price of your house is? Zoopla, Rightmove and Mouseprice all give excellent information about trends in your area and for your style of property.
And how did you select your agent? Lowest few? Highest valuation? Glossiest brochure? Also, how are you paying them? Fixed fee or percentage of sale?

Think not just about the monetary figure but also the credibility of the offer. What's the buyer's position? First time buyer? House to sell? Cash buyer with no chain?

If they have a house to sell and haven't sold yet (under offer) then I'd go back and tell them you'll keep them in mind but you want a proceedable buyer.



Yes they do. Their job is to negotiate on the vendor's behalf and try to get the best price for him. Provided they haven't accepted or refused an offer without the vendor's consent then they're doing their job properly.

When I went to sell my first house I had an offer 10k below the asking price and refused.
Then after a year on market had to take 25k less In the end.

£6500 less than the asking price.

Go back with a counter offer of say £2500 less than the asking price.

Get it accepted, then tell the misses the £4000 you have just gained is to spend on the design and construction of your new front bumper.

Thanks for the advice, food for thought. The buyer has no chain and the agent is on a fixed price. So I think he's just trying to get a quick sale. I'm going to ring them tomorrow with a reasonable counter offer and see what happens.

I used to work as estate agent and my general advise would be don't accept first offer. Make a counter offer or stick to your asking price. Why? If you will go with the first offer then the buyer will feel too comfy along the process and most likely try to renegotiate the price after the survey. Now, unless your flat is brand spanking new there will be things that require attention. Get your agent to get the buyer to up the price so that you will have some room for negotiation in case the survey will turn up negative. Otherwise you are risking loosing money on solicitors and your time presumably off the market. Remember if you got your offer quickly then it's a good flat and there will be others who are interested This is just a general rule that I used to follow and 9 times out of 10 it worked. I know it may be old school but that was how I liked to do it.

PS if your agent tells you that they will walk away then it suggests me that he lost plot as to who his client is and the client is you, buddy. He knows that they won't walk away. They like your flat otherwise the wouldn't be making you an offer. It's up to the agent to make it work your way and get you the best possible price. Maybe you should kindly remind him of this

Oh, ask your agent who they are: B2L investors, capital gain investors or they buying for themselves to live. It all makes huge different. If they are end users then I would advise you to follow my drift above.

No they don't. They act under authority. If I said barter they will barter. If I say pass the offer to me they should do that. They have acted outside their remit as they appear to have bartered which is not the default position. Estate agents act on their own behalf

Do you work as an estate agent? Because I do and have done for over 10 years.

As I said, they can't refuse or accept an offer without the vendor's consent but trying to get an offer as high as possible and qualifying an offer before presenting it is their job and is sensible estate agency.

Perhaps your definition of barter is slightly different to mine.

If you viewed a house with me at, say, £500k and you offered £400k, I might say to you, "in my opinion, that's going to be too low" or "I'll put it forward, but the vendor's already refused a considerably higher offer" or perhaps knowing this vendor as I do, they're expecting offers to start in the region of xxxx"

I'm not refusing an offer outright, I'm trying to do two things. 1. Get the best price for my client, 2. Go to them with an offer that is more likely to be accepted first time around (or at least very close to what they're looking for).

Have you read the section in Freakonomics about real estate agents in America?

Basically it says that their commission is too low for them to want to waste time haggling with buyers, so they generally recommend that the sellers accept an early offer.

But when they sell their own houses they are, on average, on the market for longer and attract a higher price.

Just wondered if it was the same in the UK.

I agree with that, but I don't think that's what the OP suggested

No way of saying whether it is a good deal or not.

No way of knowing whether the right tactic is to accept or not. Yes, if you accept that price maybe they will think you are desperate/a pushover. But if you force a higher price they will be looking for reason to push it down and may be more demanding.

I would say it comes down to you, your personality and what is important. If you are the sort of person who would be prepared to risk losing the buyer in the hope of getting a bit more, you turn it down. A buyer not in a chain is more likely to be ruthless on price - I know I would be - so their threat to walk away could be genuine.

One offer in a few weeks is not encouraging. Depends how much you need/want to move.

Also the fact you haven't turned down the offer immediately will send a strong message to the buyer. If I were them I would ignore any counter-offer, look elsewhere and leave you to sweat.

As there is no chain, there is less risk of collapse and more chance of a moving date that suits you. It's not all about getting every penny.

I'm just stepping in among the big boys here, and I am not in the business... but:

What do you have to lose by driving a hard bargain? If they want it, you are not going to blow them away. Example: as some here will know, I just bought a flat that was (a) sold in 2008 for £128k, (b) on sale for £99.5k, and my first offer was £89k.

The vendor wasn't impressed, and after some serious adult discussion we established that they were looking for mid-90s at least. I begrudgingly eased up to £91k, claiming I was really stretching reality there, and they accepted. In fact, I was willing to pay a lot more.

Play it by ear, but start high and don't be afraid of scaring buyers away.

I haggled and pushed the price up a little more (against the agents advice) and sale is now agreed!

Well done. I believe the only option in these situations is to do what you've done. As Enforcer suggests, they can only say no.

Now the fun starts!

Quite. Despite not being in business, your thinking is spot on. It behavioural at the end of the day and it happens all the time in both business and scenarios like this.

I offered over 20% less than the asking price on my last house. The estate agent told me I was crazy, friends and colleagues too. However I backed it up with sound reasoning why I had done it, not (just) to be cheeky. They came back with another 2.5% on top of mine and that was the deal done.

Typical accountants logic
Teach me please.

Interesting.

Normally, when estate agents sell their own houses, they will more realistic over what it will sell for. That said, much of it will still depend on the individual and how desperate motivated they are to sell.

There is a growing tendency amongst *some* estate agents to overvalue properties in order to win the business. Personally, I think the vendor is as much at fault for falling into the trap of instructing the agent with the highest valuation as the agent is for overvaluing in the first place.

There's enough information available online to know what your house is worth these days (unless you have something really unique/expensive).

Surprise, surprise. Well done, James!

Stupid agent, wonder what he feels like now, LOL!

Excited at the prospect of buying another shiny suit and more of those stupid pointy shoes that salespeople wear with his commission money?

Estate agents are just salesman.

They work on commission and if i were in their shoes I would shove out houses cheaply all day long if I could. Getting a couple of extra k per house isn't going to kill me if I can make 50% extra sales per month.

A better estate agent selling model might be that you tell them you will pay 0.5% up to the amount that you actually want from the buyer and then 50% commission for anything above.

Motivation is all that matters.

So a £200,000 house would attract a commission of £1,000 if it went for £200k, or £6,000 if it was sold for £210,000?

Welcome to your house taking forever to get sold - or the estate agent massively undervaluing it from the outset.

All you have correctly pointed out, Estate agents are devious little... In fact probably the easiest way to get a better price is to market it yourself and save on the estate agent fee all together.

In the days pre-internet there was a good reason to use an estate agent, but with the wonders of the interweb the reason for using one are getting less clear. The existing players are keeping everyone else out of rightmove.

http://www.channel4.com/4homes/buy-sell/...vately-08-06-25

I'm glad that you said less clear.

I am biased, sure, but I'll stand by what I've said many times before insofar as a *good* agent can be worth what you pay them.

Advertising on Rightmove, Zoopla et al. is essential in my view. There are online online agencies who will do this for you at a fraction of the cost of a high street agent and, in many cases, you may sell your house without any trouble.

It's not for everybody though.

Agreed. I paid my agent £1,500 for 10 minutes work. I had a feeling that he already had a buyer lined up for my property and it turned out to be true That was worth it to me given I was able to act quick on my purchase and save many times that . As with everything in life, there's the good and the bad.