I spoke to an agent the other day and she said every property she/they had sold had gone over the asking price. And I, as a buyer, should expect to pay over the askin price.

When I told her I had just sold my property with them, below the askin price, she changed her tune and said I was an exception.

As part of their sales pitch they told me as a seller I would get more than the askin price. I did not.

It is the agents that still fuel the fire, leading sellers to believe they will get more and that buyers should pay more.

Am I expecting too much in thinking that the askin price is enough these days?

who did you sell with?

i've bought 3 houses and every time i've paid over the asking price to secure the purchase.

I spoke to an estate agent (a really nice girl - very cute too!) the other day and asked about the state of the housing prices. She said that in the last 6 months only one of her properties had gone above the asking price.
As i understand it the housing market has really slowed down (it had to though didnt it) and we see that result in the reduced public spending on the high street. There are a number of houses near me that have been for sale for a long time now, wheras not so long ago they would have been snapped up (popular street where a year ago houses went in just a week or so!).
Thats why I just put a bid in for below the asking price (although it hasnt been accepted yet!) on the property I like.

Dont always believe what the estate agents say, remmember it can be in their interests to get a higher price.

Originally posted by designbunny
who did you sell with?

Begins with Hay and ends in brook.

That is strange because that is who gave me the good advice, I must have just got a good sales person (she was very nice and wasnt actually dealing with me and my property).

I have just bought my first house and knocked the vendor down £5000 on a £90k house.

A year or so ago we bought our first house and put an offer in at the asking price..... After a few long awaited weeks the offer was accepted....

On our second look around the house the owner of the property told us that the estate agents told them to refuse our offer so that they could get more money..... and had only told them about our offer some 2 weeks after we had put the offer in..... is this legal? as I am sure it is not morally right.

We were lucky enough the the sellers had some integraty and excepted our offfer but quite rightly could have got more money for the house,the value has increased by £15k in 12 months.

I believe that estate agents are a law unto themselves and completely only in it for the profit they can make and show no customer care

unfortunately estate agents are in business, the business is taking commision from you for selling your property.

u have to tidy it up, show people round & present your home in the proper way.
they take a quick snap,put a prepared standard ad in the press& then charge you.
common sense should tell you that they want to earn more from you, any one that thinks thay are on anyones side is being misled.

We spend a lot of our time dealing with clients who have been promised soooooooooo much for their property and then found they can not get the price, but are then gutted, even though the agents gave a bad valuation,as said so many times some agents will say what they think you want to hear,we get them calling our clients offering this and that deal to get the house on their books-but of course our clients are not in favour of using an agent at any cost, why would you?
By the way quick plug, we are soon to be advertising our properties in Bradway!

From my experience, it depends on the property. The signal from the agents on anything that's been on the market for > 3 or 4 months is that the vendor is open to offers. Ofent, the offer is 10 -20% less than the sticker price (which itself may have been reduced 5% already).

The problem with the housing market is that the media and estate agents don't seem to understand the limitations of using arithmetic means which is rather misleading.

Originally posted by PINGU
I spoke to an agent the other day and she said every property she/they had sold had gone over the asking price. And I, as a buyer, should expect to pay over the askin price.

When I told her I had just sold my property with them, below the askin price, she changed her tune and said I was an exception.

As part of their sales pitch they told me as a seller I would get more than the askin price. I did not.

It is the agents that still fuel the fire, leading sellers to believe they will get more and that buyers should pay more.

Am I expecting too much in thinking that the askin price is enough these days?
Maybe your house wasn't as an attractive option compared to the others they have sold...why did you accept below the asking price??

The agent said they had sold other properties in my area for X amount, and as my property was bigger and the standard of presentation was higher, that I should market it at a higher price, and that I could expect more than the asking price.

I accepted a lower price as it had dragged on for 3 months and viewers kept asking why the property was so expensive compared to others that had previously sold. I explained what the agent had said about the size and presentation and that I was just following their advice.

Even so I was still getting very low offers. When a cash buyer came along matching the highest offer I had, I took it. I needed a sale as any offers I put in on other properties were not even looked at as I had not yet sold.

It definitely seems to have slowed down in meersbrook. I was looking at houses here for years before I finally managed to get one at auction.. everything was going at well over the asking price.

A year later and it seems things are going at around the asking price or just below... apart from exceptionally nice houses.

Blundells told me these houses went for more than the asking price, and I was stupid enough to believe them :-(

I won't make that mistake again!

I've recently had an offer accepted on a house in Crookes for £3k under asking price. Probably could've got it for £5k under had the estate agent not advised us to increase our bid unnecessarily. Was expecting to pay at least £5k over asking given what friends had experienced with buying in Hillborough recently.

Anyhow, a word of advice- be upfront and friendly with the owner/ tenant. It's made the whole process much simpler for us by not having to trust the agent's advice on every issue.

When we were buying our house a year ago, some of the properties we were interested in went for up to £30k over the asking price! It was getting ridiculous, and very frustrating!

We finally got our house at £20k over the asking price and I'm worried that it's worth less now than what we paid for it a year ago.

I'm apprehensive about the price of ours too and we've not even exchanged yet!

As other people have said though, you'd only lose out through falling prices if you had to sell during a low period.

I think is is important not to confuse home with investment. You are buying a place because you want to live there and even if you had to sell on a falling market the house you were 2 buy will have also dropped and would only becomes a problem if you got into neg equity, needed to leave the market or actively trading property for a living...

Originally posted by dudu
I think is is important not to confuse home with investment.

Exactly, if you plan to live there for the next fifteen years who cares what the housing market does ?