UK Landlord Forum / Life

Good Morning Folks

I am thinking of purchasing a property which is on for sale, in the hope of letting it out to tenants.  I am thinking of putting in an offer which would be below the asking price. 

Could someone please be kind enough to give me advice on the following questions:

1.    How can I be sure that the estate agent has passed on the offer figure to the owner of the property?
2.   How would I know that the owner has really accepted/rejected my offer?  The estate agent could just say the owner has rejected the offer in the hope that I increase my offer figure?
3.   How can I find out what other prospective purchasers have put in as an offer and try to put in a higher offer?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

The Agent has to put all offers to the seller, by law.

It is a game though and you just have to play it better than them.

The best way of finding out what others are offering is to withdraw some cash and give it to the Agent, " A drink" is at least £1,000 in situations such as these. About as legal as the Agent withholding an offer though!

The Agent is meant to work on behalf of the vendor to get the best price, and as such they can hide behind the fact they were trying to get you to offer more.

thanks boboff

Zoopla is very good for telling you how long a property has been on the market. I like that feature when assessing properties to consider making an offer on one.

If the property has been on the market for 6 months, or more, and has received no offers, then the Estate Agent is obviously going to be keen to get lowball offers to their Vendor, they'll want the property off their books and their commission... the Vendor might also be pretty desperate, their plans could be falling down around them 'cos this bloody property won't shift.

If it's only been on for a short while and it's a real lowball offer, then I would certainly expect the Estate Agent to behave... possibly a bit differently. The Estate Agent and Vendor will be optimistic at the beginning, and won't yet have had their hopes of achieving asking price dashed. That said... house prices are going up, so it might not meet the asking price today, but it might in July...