Offer to purchase question

APoc184 said:
Is it generally frowned upon to discuss price right then and there when one goes and view a property?

Either with the agent or even the sellers if they are there? Or even both at the same time?

While walking through with the agent, we tend to mention to each other things that need work or might need an upgrade in a while. Like outdated kitchens or bathrooms. Or like last night the garden which will need a couple months of TLC and some proper eradication and trimming to get things back from a forest to garden.

Things that we think might give us reason the offer a lower price. But seems like all agents go deaf right about then and start changing the subject.
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In my case, I find it difficult to negotiate, and think it's easier for the agent to negotiate on my behalf. Since they only negotiate based not on what they want, but what on the buyer tells them.

Story time.
When I sold my primary residence townhouse, I convinced the agent to put it in the market for about R50k more than she wanted to. She also sold my investment property, and she likes to get things done quick.

The place had been in the market for about a month, and so far no offers. We had another day where she booked something like 4 people to come and look at the place, one after the other, but when she came in, she said that the intercom didn't work for her, so I should please go and wait at the gate to open for people.

First car pulls up, and I ask if they are there to view my unit number, they say no, different unit number. It turns out it was another estate agent selling another property.
I walk up and down opening for people and letting them out, and when the people viewing the other unit were done there and saying their goodbyes to the agent, I walk up to them and just tell them that I'm also selling my unit, and they should walk over and have a look. Their agent gave me a dirty look, but all is fair in the game of getting your house sold.

They came over, and gushed at how much better it looked than the other one, and that it was cheaper. They definitely wanted it. They were adamant they were taking it.

And then the guy wanted to start negotiating for the price. My agent flashed me a quick "NO" look, and I just told them that it was already priced low for a quick sell, and that they should negotiate with the agent.

The agent and I then agreed to give them a maximum of R10k off to seal the deal. The agent came back after the meeting, and I accepted that afternoon.

I personally wouldn't have wanted to stand the 5 - 10 minutes there to haggle about price.
If it was my wife, she probably would have accepted the first number they threw at her. She HATES arguing about price or even asking for discounts.

Agents also normally have a clause in their contracts that they only get full commission when they get full asking price. If they get a lower offer, they negotiate a lower commission with the seller. I of course negotiated an even lower commission, as she didn't actually find the buyers, but she did handle all the admin around it.
 
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pinball wizard said:
Walk away. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
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So the clock is ticking. The seller has 30 minutes to accept/decline. The house is in immaculate condition and I've kinda fallen in love with it but I get you. I've been burnt before and this time round I made sure everything under the sun was covered in the OTP document.
 
APoc184 said:
Jip. Spent all the time yesterday looking at all that stuff.

Roof, ceilings and all is in great nick. Exterior walls are facebrick so was easy to see of there are any cracks there. We also like the facebrick style outside and it also saves costs on painting. Pipes in the roof were all redone 5 years ago when they had a solar geyser installed.

DB is pretty standard and I know they will need to give us COC for that and the gas before transfer can happen. So peace of mind there.

Would also like to carefully plan the kitchen and do it once off. Kitchen is my happy place so would definitely take my time on pulling that trigger.

In short the place is really solid, and well maintained apart from the garden which is understandable with them getting much older.

Wife is coming over to my office later and we will sign OTP.

Here goes!
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Nice dude...

Good luck on the offer, and it sounds like you have found a property that ticks the boxes for you, or can tick all the boxes when you put your stamp on it.

And I'm the same, the kitchen is my happy place, the missus can get out of the kitchen and leave it to me :P
 
Barbarian Conan said:
In my case, I find it difficult to negotiate, and think it's easier for the agent to negotiate on my behalf. Since they only negotiate based not on what they want, but what on the buyer tells them.

Story time.
When I sold my primary residence townhouse, I convinced the agent to put it in the market for about R50k more than she wanted to. She also sold my investment property, and she likes to get things done quick.

The place had been in the market for about a month, and so far no offers. We had another day where she booked something like 4 people to come and look at the place, one after the other, but when she came in, she said that the intercom didn't work for her, so I should please go and wait at the gate to open for people.

First car pulls up, and I ask if they are there to view my unit number, they say no, different unit number. It turns out it was another estate agent selling another property.
I walk up and down opening for people and letting them out, and when the people viewing the other unit were done there and saying their goodbyes to the agent, I walk up to them and just tell them that I'm also selling my unit, and they should walk over and have a look. Their agent gave me a dirty look, but all is fair in the game of getting your house sold.

They came over, and gushed at how much better it looked than the other one, and that it was cheaper. They definitely wanted it. They were adamant they were taking it.

And then the guy wanted to start negotiating for the price. My agent flashed me a quick "NO" look, and I just told them that it was already priced low for a quick sell, and that they should negotiate with the agent.

The agent and I then agreed to give them a maximum of R10k off to seal the deal.

I personally wouldn't have wanted to stand the 5 - 10 minutes there to haggle about price.
If it was my wife, she probably would have accepted the first number they threw at her. She HATES arguing about price or even asking for discounts.

Agents also normally have a clause in their contracts that they only get full commission when they get full asking price. If they get a lower offer, they negotiate a lower commission with the seller. I of course negotiated an even lower commission, as she didn't actually find the buyers, but she did handle all the admin around it.
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Which is why I asked, because I always find it awkward and hate to negotiate prices but last night felt so natural and we truly had a nice chat with the owners. So I summed up the moment and very respectfully engaged with the owner and agent about our budget and the changes we would like to make which will cost us a bit extra over time. And yeah, we are talking about the biggest and most important purchase of our lives so far.

Think the owners saw that we are not there to haggle them out of their property and that the points we raised are fair and we genuinely want to buy the property for us as a family of 4. And possibly for life.
The property obviously has loads of sentimental value to them because the old man built it himself 32years ago and raised their children there. So don't think they will sell to just anyone even if the price is right.

See in the OTP now that it has the standard x% commission for final selling price clause in the document. So agent obviously going to lose some money on the deal.
 
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Napalm2880 said:
So the clock is ticking. The seller has 30 minutes to accept/decline. The house is in immaculate condition and I've kinda fallen in love with it but I get you. I've been burnt before and this time round I made sure everything under the sun was covered in the OTP document.
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What happened?
 
Napalm2880 said:
Seller ghosted the agent!

Meeting with the agent at 3pm today to discuss things :popcorn:
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Ah damn! Sorry to hear.

Perhaps seller is hoping for a higher offer to come in and ignoring current offer for as long as possible?

But something seems a bit off doesn't it?
 
APoc184 said:
Ah damn! Sorry to hear.

Perhaps seller is hoping for a higher offer to come in and ignoring current offer for as long as possible?

But something seems a bit off doesn't it?
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So the agent swears that they haven't received another offer in the month the place has been on the market, and they have sole mandate. When I spoke with the agent, she even suggested that we let the offer lapse and put in a new offer at a lower amount.

At this point it seems like the seller might just be emotionally attached to the house as it's been her primary residence for 10yrs now but honestly this is all just speculation. Seller is definitely a little coo coo :X3:
 
Napalm2880 said:
So the agent swears that they haven't received another offer in the month the place has been on the market, and they have sole mandate.

At this point it seems like the seller might just be emotionally attached to the house as it's been her primary residence for 10yrs now but honestly this is all just speculation. Seller is definitely a little coo coo :X3:
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Then perhaps she shouldn't have put it in the market knowing it might sell quick.

Hoping for a favourable outcome for you.

Now that we are also going for our 2nd shot, I can only imagine the stress and anticipation of waiting for a good answer.

Keep us up to date.

Our latest OTP has an expiry of Wednesday 5 August 23h59. So our wait starts in about an hour when we drop off the signed docs at the agent.
 
And so we sign again....

OTP just delivered to agent.



b10.png


/Apoc184 starts thread about how to get out of new OTP! :p:p:p
 
APoc184 said:
And so we sign again....

OTP just delivered to agent.



b10.png


/Apoc184 starts thread about how to get out of new OTP! :p:p:p
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*holding thumbs that its accepted*

Good luck on this one... I'm guessing this one has a totally different feel to it for you guys. You are feeling excited and hopeful that it gets accepted?

Want photos of the house when you get it though :)... so we can critique it and then give you some horribly bad financial advice :P
 
ToxicBunny said:
*holding thumbs that its accepted*

Good luck on this one... I'm guessing this one has a totally different feel to it for you guys. You are feeling excited and hopeful that it gets accepted?

Want photos of the house when you get it though :)... so we can critique it and then give you some horribly bad financial advice :p
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Thanks. Yes, we are actually super excited this time and hoping for a signature. And 100% confirmed by agent that ours are the first and only offer although there has been plenty of other interest.

We offered exactly what was discussed last night and agent is confident that there shouldn't be any counter offers because of last night's discussion. So it will be a simple yes or no from the sellers when he takes it to them.

Here is hoping that my compliment about the lekker coffee the tannie made is enough to seal the deal :ROFL:.
 
APoc184 said:
Thanks. Yes, we are actually super excited this time and hoping for a signature. And 100% confirmed by agent that ours are the first and only offer although there has been plenty of other interest.

We offered exactly what was discussed last night and agent is confident that there shouldn't be any counter offers because of last night's discussion. So it will be a simple yes or no from the sellers when he takes it to them.

Here is hoping that my compliment about the lekker coffee the tannie made is enough to seal the deal :ROFL:.
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If you called her tannie in a lekker respectful way, then you may have sealed the deal :p

How would you respond if they countered say at R40k higher than you offer? That will gauge your level of interest in the property and also give you an idea if you are prepared for a bit of negotiation and wiggle room.
 
ToxicBunny said:
If you called her tannie in a lekker respectful way, then you may have sealed the deal :p

How would you respond if they countered say at R40k higher than you offer? That will gauge your level of interest in the property and also give you an idea if you are prepared for a bit of negotiation and wiggle room.
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Always respectful... Think that is why we clicked so easily with them.

Lets say we didn't have the heart to heart discussion last night and we simply put in an offer on our own feel... We would probably have put in an offer of only R50k less than the listing price. And if not accepted we would have been willing to go up by about max R20k from that. So R30k less than listing.

That is how much we like the property and the area and how well we believed the property to be priced from the get go. As well as the fact that none of the stuff we would want to change has any major influence on the livability of the place.

But yeah. Offer is in for R80k less, based on discussions over lekker "boere koffie en koekies" :)

So lets say they do actually counter and ask for R40k more. We would probably do a bit of arm wrestling and try settle for about R20k more than offer. Which would still be R10k less than we would have offered on our own accord.
 
APoc184 said:
Always respectful... Think that is why we clicked so easily with them.

Lets say we didn't have the heart to heart discussion last night and we simply put in an offer on our own feel... We would probably have put in an offer of only R50k less than the listing price. And if not accepted we would have been willing to go up by about max R20k from that. So R30k less than listing.

That is how much we like the property and the area and how well we believed the property to be priced from the get go. As well as the fact that none of the stuff we would want to change has any major influence on the livability of the place.

But yeah. Offer is in for R80k less, based on discussions over lekker "boere koffie en koekies" :)

So lets say they do actually counter and ask for R40k more. We would probably do a bit of arm wrestling and try settle for about R20k more than offer. Which would still be R10k less than we would have offered on our own accord.
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Then you are playing the game properly.....

You have room to move up a bit if it will get you the property, and you actually know that number in your head.
 
It feels like we have a bunch of people in our corner rooting for us. And being first time buyers it really is encouraging to read all the helpful tips and solid advice.

If you told me 18h30 on Saturday, just after getting lucky, that we will be signing another OTP, I would have asked you where you got a hold of so much alcohol.

Wife was understandably really down after the whole debacle and wanted to give up house hunting for a while. But I told her that one bad experience (which was partly our own fault) does not mean they are all like that.
Took some convincing and reassuring but she eventually made the appointment to go and have a look. And here we are, only days later, with her discussing things like which room is going to be the guest room. And is she finally going to spend the money on decent black out curtains like she always wanted to.

THANKS GUYS AND GALS!
 
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