house buying advice - scotland!

[GBLiz]

Me and OH are going househunting this weekend

moving from england to scotland and obviously the laws are different so we dont have a clue really lol

but when a house is on the market at say offers over £100k, how much are you expected to offer, realisitically? Just on or over the 'offers from' price, or a few grand over??

we have a max budget but ideally want to stay 10k under that, so we dont want to just put in our max offer....

 

[LaineyG]

The scottish market is on the slow down....if you believe the hype!

The normal way to do things is a property will have a closing date (usually a Friday 12pm) and you submit your sealed offers to a solicitor who opens them after 12pm and highest offer wins!

I've pals who have been in the 80 - 160 k market who have offered up to 10k over the asking price! And some of them didn't get the house they were after!

If you get a good solicitor then they should be able to advise you on your offer!

If you are looking at the west coast/glasgow area, pm me your desired location and I'll do my best to advise on no-go areas!

xxx

 

[missac]

We lived in Scotland and when we sold our house we accepted an offer 15k over the asking price, in does vary though, if it is a desireable location you could be expected to offer 20-30k over, my friend had to do that on her flat. It is a very frustrating process. When we bought our house we actually said to the vendorif we offered you x would you take it, it was the asking price but they said yes for a quick sale. The best thing to do is try and glean as much info as you can when you look round, how long has it been on the market, much interest, do they have somewhere they want to buy etc, if they have found somewhere to move to they will want a quick sale and that is when you can jump in with a low offer maybe the asking price or 1k over it! Good luck

 

[sarafet]

it's usually at least 10% over the asking price the property will go for.. if it's in a high demand area etc, it can go anything upto 30% over

it's crazy up here with house buying, where abouts are you looking liz?

xxxx

 

[NIE]

10% of the offers over price sounds about right. That's what I was told by my estate agent anyway.

Try to get a house that is fixed price. At least you will know exactly what the seller wants for their house, and you won't need to get into a bidding war. xxx

 

[kazlin]

Good luck with it gymbabeliz, let us know how you get on

 

[daftscotslass]

Definitely 10% as others have said and in some places well over that. HOWEVER... you can only get a mortgage on what the place values at in a survey/valuation (which you need for a mortgage). So if you offer 10% over and the place values at that (often surveyors will tweak it a bit so that if you offer a reasonable amount over rather than excessive they will make the valuation match the offer) then you won't have to foot the extra.

Example...

House is offers over £100,000

Place values at £110,000 but you've heard there are higher offers on the table so you offer £120,000...

You've got to foot that additional 10 grand yourself in addition to any deposit. It's a pain and I didn't realise this until we bought our first place last year but thankfully we only went £500 over the valuation!

I don't think things are slowing down in a lot of areas, it's scary. Our flat has jumped in value by at least 10 grand in a year (possibly more if we finish decorating) - our mortgage advisor who has his own estate agent came in to "pass on some papers" (i.e. have a nosy) and gave us a sneaky valuation. There was another house on the market locally in a ridiculously popular area - offers over £280,0000. I was in the office when someone phoned to complain that their offer hadn't been the highest on the closing date (£341,000) but they were informed the highest offer was £380,000

We were quite lucky - try and get the seller to show you round! He ended up taking our offer because we had said we could offer him what he wanted and give him a quick sale. There were other slightly higher offers on the table but both wanted a couple of months to close whereas we could move in right away - the seller wanted a quick shift so it didn't go to a closing date. It doesn't happen a lot but you could be lucky!

Sorry I've rambled but let us know how you get on!

 

[bhe101]

My mum recently sold her flat. Was on at offers over 89k and sold for 122k. Hope you manage to find something!

 

[babydust]

like the others have said it really does depend on the area we tried for about 4 houses in the area i am in we offered about 10k over the asking price and always lost out so the one we got we offered 15k over and got it, i hate offers over it just turns into a bidding war

 

[SarahH]

It really depends on the area. We are going to be selling our place soon and have had it valued - we were told to put it on for offers over £125k and should expect to get at least £160k

Not everywhere does closing dates tho - check with the seller - some people will just hold out for the best price.

Also, look out for some fixed price places - we bought our place fixed price 6yrs ago for £50k and with the market - well we will make a massive profit!

 

[GBLiz]

wow i didnt realise they might expect that much over!

with the talk of house price crashes i thought people would accept pretty much anything over the offer-from price!

luckily about half of the houses we're looking at are fixed price, and a couple are empty so they must be desparate to sell them!

the area we're looking is Kirkintilloch near Glasgow....

i cant wait, its going to be a really busy day tho!, we're driving to scotland through the evening, crash at a service station hotel when it gets to midnight, then seeing 12 houses all on one day and then driving home!!

 

[chickadee1976]

I was speaking to an Estae agent yesterday and he was saying that although the norm a few months ago was to offer 10% over because of the slow down in the market people are offering much less.

The problem he says is that the banks are not lending money so unless you have a deposit you have no chance.

Fixed price properties tend to have been on the market a while so there might still be a little coming and going on those

 

[sarafet]

the area we're looking is Kirkintilloch near Glasgow....

not far from me!!! we could go mummies days out, glasgow shopping is ace

best of luck with the house hunting, sounds like a busy day

 

[GBLiz]

the area we're looking is Kirkintilloch near Glasgow....

not far from me!!! we could go mummies days out, glasgow shopping is ace

best of luck with the house hunting, sounds like a busy day

ooh! I'll do you a special mummies deal at the gym aswell

 

[sarafet]

the area we're looking is Kirkintilloch near Glasgow....

not far from me!!! we could go mummies days out, glasgow shopping is ace

best of luck with the house hunting, sounds like a busy day

ooh! I'll do you a special mummies deal at the gym aswell

i'll need it after finding out what i weigh compared to my booking weight