House/ Bargain hunters

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anuj21k

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Hi,

Just want to start a new thread to hear experiences of people who were looking for house/bought a house, within last year and who are still looking for one. Particularly from those who had made an offer and while strictly not discussing prices getting an idea on how much of an discount is possible to attain on asking price, with region where purchase/offer is made.

I myself have read here several time that 20% is easy to attain but still in personal experience have'nt got any positive response from any vendors yet. Though hold and wait policy seems viable I am sure time will soon run out on us buyer's as economic growth will resume within an year. I think our personal experiences can help each other to position ourself right in this market.

Hope this is ok with moderator.
 
Hi,
I put an offer on a house in Cork 20% less than the asking price. It was rejected. I made it clear that the house needed a lot of work i.e. insulation, windows, kitchen, redecorate etc and that is why my offer was 20% less.
I think that some people are still living in a world of their own i.e. expecting pre-recession prices, especially in Cork as we have not had a major hit to the jobs industry as Limerick has. I also think that we will be in the same place this time next year. There are planty of houses out there that have never even been sold once.
Regards & Happy Christmas.
Mike
 
Hi from your name I guess you are in Cork!
I'm in cork too and we sold our house in august this year (09) and we have been looking to buy since May this year

The only thing I know for definite is about the house we have sold
I don't mind giving figures here (hope its ok) because I feel its very difficult when no one knows what is going on

It is a 3 bed terrace very close to city centre - no work really needed
Originally put on the market for 310,000 on Dec 08 - bananas asking price the EA wanted to, not us.

Over the months after no one even viewed and we dropped to 248K and then to 220K and finally sometime over the summer to 200K (we really wanted to sell!)
We finally sold for 180K in August and while that was hard to do I really do feel now that it was a very fair price. We bought the house in 2003 for 150,000 so we managed to sell for more than we bought which is great.

The buying is not going at all as well!
We agreed to buy a house in September for 326K which had an asking of 350K however this is not going to proceed I think
And as of this morning we have agreed to buy another house that had an asking of 350k for 225k - now this house is a wreck and needs a huge amount of work - it has no heating - mouldy rooms, no working bathrooms (don't know why we are doing it but can see the potential!!)

Anyway its probably way too much information but as I say I really do think that people need more information.

In cork particularly I have found that in some areas it is very hard to get a house lower than the asking as people in Cork seem to be prepared to pay for some specific areas and types of house.

So CorkMike - hope that all helps a bit
 
Thanks all for your reply.
Thats absolutely right I was in same situation in Dublin and 20% less is no-no when you analyse all factors thats fair offer. People are still living in wonderland and hopefuly will realise there mistake soon:)
I do think that builders can't afford to sell on low offers because of there own situation but govt. is not helping either by proactively trying to curtail free cirulation of information on sale prices of houses.

Just for your info:
We got news saying house prices have gone down by 40% since peak and had bottomed out with only 40K unsold houses country wide. Which is totally untrue real figure is around 250K.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/unsold-property-estimates-way-off-the-mark-1544118.html (http://www.independent.ie/opinion/le...k-1544118.html)
 
I think it really depends on the house and the realism of the asking price. We get a lot of people on AAM asking what %age discount to expect off an asking price and there's really no way of knowing because asking prices vary so much from the delusional to realistic.

I bought my house earlier this year for €550k on a (then) asking price of €680k. That said, they would have accepted €650k a year prior (when the asking price was even more) so the asking price never caught up in any shape or form with the actual sale/offer price. Had the asking price been €550k when I was buying, I wouldn't necessarily have thought that an immediate 20% off that was fair (although I'd have loved another 20% off!)

For a house that's realistically priced, I'd say (IMO) achieving an offer of 85% - 90% of asking would be viewed as a good result by the vendor.
 
jmsm said:
We finally sold for 180K in August and while that was hard to do I really do feel now that it was a very fair price. We bought the house in 2003 for 150,000 so we managed to sell for more than we bought which is great.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to be annoying, but when you factor in how much interest you have paid over the past 6 years, including all the fees you had to pay when purchasing your house, you probably sold at a loss.

This is something people should keep in mind when selling if they are trying to break even or make a profit!
 
if it bottoms then there will be a sharp uplift in prices, a slight fallback and then more gradual IMHO.
So if you sell to buy, don't wait around too long to buy again. (or you could gamble)

Sell cheap/buy cheap
 
thanks for that UFC
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!) I am not that financially sophisticated - so I know I paid a certain amount for the house - then for 7 years we paid some of that off - we actually over paid by a good amount
then when it came to it we owed 115,000 and sold the house for 180,000
thats real money to me so I fee happy enough about that,
I have no doubt that the bank made lots of money too but that is the way it goes with trying to buy a house. Right now we are renting and someone else is making money from that. Main thing is we have a roof over our heads and were lucky to have things work out for us

and monagt I agree with you too so hopefully we will get the buying over with soon enough too
 
UFC said:
I'm not trying to be annoying, but when you factor in how much interest you have paid over the past 6 years, including all the fees you had to pay when purchasing your house, you probably sold at a loss.

This is something people should keep in mind when selling if they are trying to break even or make a profit!
Click to expand...

On the flip side, they probably saved some money by not paying rent.
We can complicate calculations further if we want to take into account tax, maintenance & insurance costs.
 
You should bear in mind that there are potential sellers out there who are prepared to wait rather than basically give their houses away. I'm in that position, I inherited a house and refurbished and redecorated it with a view to selling. It's in a good area, 20 minutes walk to Dublin city centre, the house two doors down sold for 485,000 two years ago and having shown it to two local estate agents I was told I should ask 320,000 and accept 280,000. Basically I'm not willing to sell at that price and since my outgoings on it are minimal I'm happy to hold on to it and to invite family and friends to use it for visits (it means we'll have a very full house for Christmas this year for example and we had lots of friends use it for long weekends during the year) I figure that in the long run it will sell, it's a great house in in a great location with no work to be done, when the market picks up I'll sell and in the mean time I'm enjoying being able to invite people to visit without any of the usual hassle involved.
 
Goomigen said:
You should bear in mind that there are potential sellers out there who are prepared to wait rather than basically give their houses away. I'm in that position, I inherited a house and refurbished and redecorated it with a view to selling. It's in a good area, 20 minutes walk to Dublin city centre, the house two doors down sold for 485,000 two years ago and having shown it to two local estate agents I was told I should ask 320,000 and accept 280,000. Basically I'm not willing to sell at that price and since my outgoings on it are minimal I'm happy to hold on to it and to invite family and friends to use it for visits (it means we'll have a very full house for Christmas this year for example and we had lots of friends use it for long weekends during the year) I figure that in the long run it will sell, it's a great house in in a great location with no work to be done, when the market picks up I'll sell and in the mean time I'm enjoying being able to invite people to visit without any of the usual hassle involved.
Click to expand...
The way things are going it might be worth half of its current value in next 3 years but defintely wont go as high it was couple of years ago. If you follow markets there are highs and lows, and if you want to chase a high you might be up for waiting a full cycle that is roughly 15-20 years. I am sure anyways that even if price rises it would be minimal and bottom might be a little bit away. As unemployment is growing, alongside govt. budget deficit, tax is going up etc. etc. it seems like we might be atleast couple of years away from bottom but for sure very near it.
 
WaterSprite makes some good points above. There's no fixed percentage discount you can look for on an asking price - it depends on how realistic the asking price is. Myself and my wife sold in the past couple of months in Dublin, and only had to come down 5% on asking - however the house was mint and the asking price was realistic given the market. Sold in under 2 weeks.

Similar when I bought my new place - around 5% under asking. Initial offer was around 10% under but there was a bit of interest in the house.

However, I saw one estate nearby with 3 similar semis for sale at 3 completely different prices. There's obviously much more chance of a low offer being accepted when there's more choice in an area, especially with the higher-priced houses in that area.
 
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