Owning your own home

So the summation of PB is ymmv?

Some of my mates have had great flats in good locations where the EA is just a key dropbox in a shit suit taking money for adding an extra and inefficient layer of comms.

In those scenarios where the place sells itself, it's hard to see what possible value an EA can add.

We made our estate agents work for their money when my wife and I sold our flats in East London.
Mine did a lot of shaking the buyer's solicitor and making him actually do some conveyancing, and fielded a lot of dumb questions. He also persuaded me not to tell the buyer to fucking do one a few times. Plus he handled all the viewings so I didn't even need to live there, and, with my cat, could be at my wife's place, which had already sold. No buyer wants to see a cat litter tray. My wife's agents did a sealed bids auction when her place proved amazingly popular. Well worth their 1.5%.

My french agent is on 9%, for which she does the actual conveyancing and draws up the contracts for the notaire.

how common are sealed bids auctions in london/england? can’t buy a place up here (glasgow) without having to go through one since the market is so red hot in selected neighbourhoods

If anyone ever needs a party wall surveyor hit me up. Our one has been so good and really reasonable.

New ceilings

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Edging closer to be finished while simultaneously running out of money. This is one of the most stressful things I've ever done.

Anything funky I wouldn't consider them at all.

Definitely this. My parents used Purple Bricks to sell their 3 bed semi in Warwickshire, we're not using them to sell our place.

In those scenarios where the place sells itself, it's hard to see what possible value an EA can add.

Yeah if you're selling a place in a property hotspot in London and it's fairly standard I would definitely consider using them seeing as you just need to get it on the property portals then buyers will pretty much be begging for viewings.

I'll happily echo what @hoefla has said - I think it's awesome that you are doing this properly. It's so nice to see.

I can imaging how stressful it is too - I hope it goes well from here on!

If things go South, I'm sure we can rustle up enough hands on the DIY thread to head over & pitch in.

This is one of the most stressful things I've ever done.

Playing Miniclip's 8-Ball Pool?

In the red hot 'hoods it tends to go to best and final rather than sealed bids as such. Normally there will have been a first set of bids, then it will move to best and final, so different to the Scottish model but you're not meant to know what others are bidding.

This is one of the most stressful things I've ever done.

Yup. Good work on the progress though. You've had all the internet/AV/etc. cables run before getting that plasterboard up, right? ;)

Ha! Zoomed in, thought I recognised it.

There's still time. Every floorboard has got to come up yet so so the floors can be leveled.

The sag in the middle of the room is 70mm

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for our last sale we had 30/35 viewings in two weeks - went to a closing date (i.e. sealed bids final auction) with 15 offers. winning bid was ridiculous amount over the valuation, which is what tends to happen if there's a piranha 3D-esque feeding frenzy. best one was the couple who were gushing about the flat at viewing, saying they couldn't believe they'd found somewhere they loved so quickly and then at closing... they bid under valuation. I mean, they would have known they were bidding against 10+ other people.... wacky

/not-so-stealth-I'm-now-loaded-post

You're doing a fantastic job of this! I'd happily join a PTSD house renovation thread.

Once my new house completes I'll be in a similar boat so expect some questions!

We've had our house downvalued by our mortgage lender by 30k (~5%) - do we play hardball and just say thats our maximum offer? we could realistically add 5-10k of cash if we needed to.

They're a husband and wife (with kid) who are living in separate countries until the house exchanges so they should be keen to get moving..

My worry with just reducing straight to the valuation price is that they will know that 30k less price = 5k of deposit funds less so they would know that at the very least we would have 5k

Ha! Zoomed in, thought I recognised it.

Speaking of which, just fucked it.

Had just over 25M coins and went to play Bangkok (5M entry fee) and finger hit the screen rather than swiping and it stuck me in a Berlin game. Scrabbled to back out before it matched me with someone but failed. Lost that game (just) was left with ~9,000 coins, tried the "all in" game to double or quits and now have 0 coins. Might be a time to just delete it (again), it's too much of a time suck.

Rage quit

This is the content I'm here for. Feel your pain. Keep us posted

Same happened with us (35k downvalue).

Maybe play it straight, as you say, and explain transparently that it gives you that extra 5k, so go in 25k less as a starting point. If i was the seller I'd have done those maths and appreciated the honesty / gesture. I'm crap at negotiating though, our sellers barely budged and we borrowed and sucked most of it up.

We've had our house downvalued by our mortgage lender by 30k (~5%) - do we play hardball and just say thats our maximum offer?

To be blunt, fuck off, no.

Although the bank's valuation has the effect of reducing the affordability of the house, your offer is your offer, not the bank's.

That the bank won't lend as much as you want is your problem - from a 'moral' perspective you should not be asking the sellers for anything here, you should find the money. If their position is so weak that they will be willing to meet you somewhere you are then exploiting their position (yeah that old chestnut).

Practically speaking they might meet you somewhere or they might tell you to do one and go to the next buyer on the list, your gamble.

Personally I'd be getting the money together to meet as near to my offer as I felt comfortable with (cash, another lender?) so that when I went back cap in hand they got the impression that I tried and had as few excuses as possible to refuse.

Edit: The implied context here is that you want the house. If you don't want the house, all bets are off.

How about if i told you that at the new price its still the most expensive property sold in the area (with 4 beds) and they're still making 165k on the price they bought it for 4 years ago?

@greeno and you advise is the opposite of what our mortgage broker and our estate agents have told us to do, which makes it interesting.

How about if i told you that at the new price its still the most expensive property sold in the area (with 4 beds) and they're still making 165k on the price they bought it for 4 years ago?

Well then why the fuck did you offer what you did?

#savage

I'm being mean but I find all this re-negotiating based on what other people think (or previously, what other people think is going to happen in the market) a bit odd - you are the grown up here, you know what the place is worth to you. I think you should buy it at or as close to your offer (subject to survey blah blah) or buy somewhere else.

i get howards perspective, but there's always further context to each case and it depends how the initial negotiation went...

^^ A bit harsh.

I think the banks are pricing in a drop in house values so you should heed that warning. If your situation changes - for whatever reason - and you needed to sell, being £30k underwater wont be fun. Personally, I'd offer them £30k less and be prepared to walk away.