list price/asking price

[Mark]

Apologies if this is in completely the wrong place but this is my first time here so be gentle with me!  I am looking to buy a house in France and wondered if, as in England, it is accepted practice to offer less than the asking price initially.  Thanks in advance...

Looking forward to ploughing through the huge amount of invaluable information held within this forum, maybe discovering where I should have put this query, and asking loads more dumb questions as a result of not reading the FAQs properly!

[a.foreman]

We did and got £17,000  of our £110,000 priced house

first they drop  it by £10,000 but we said no and would  look elsewhere

Then a week later they come back with an offer  of £17,000 less

 

SO YES  OFFER A LOT LESS

[Richard-R]

Oh yes, but the French being French some will tell you to you to go and f yourself in the nicest possible way. We put in an offer for a house that was for sale at 240,000 but that our architect said should have been 190,000. We like it a lot and the location was good so we offerd 210,000, only to get a very nasty letter from the owner. Still believe it is on the market 2 years after we saw it. Now that makes me smile.

[Tresco]

A similar question was asked in the Western France area of the forum recently, by Sarnia. The original poster may want to have a look at the responses to that.

We offered about 4% below the asking price, and this was accepted without any problem. We really thought the property was overpriced, even at the price we paid, but as RDKR points out, it was the right house in the right place etc. We were spending over £1000 each time we came over to search, and reckoned we may as well give the vendor the money rather than Brittany Ferries.

Searching for friends recently in Charente Maritime, for 10 months, we got a much, much better feel for pricing than we ever did on those 4 trips we made looking for our own house.  This is one reason why it's a good idea to rent in the area you like before buying.

tresco

[Mark]

Thanks.  I'll check the Western France thread.  We're hoping to stay in the Vendée whilst looking for a house in the South West (don't ask, but there is some logic behind it!) so at least the ferry costs won't be an issue.  Overnighting in Formule 1 motels whilst down south shouldn't break the bank.

I was also wondering if I could expect prices to be cheaper when looking 'on the ground' (estate agent windows etc) than on Internet sites, or are they much the same? 

 

[Tresco]

Mark, have you got a specific area that you are looking in. SW France is pretty big. Is it your first time house hunting here?

The prices should be the same, if it's the same agent! Be prepared though to find the same house offered by different agents at what seem to be very different prices.

tresco

[Mark]

Ha!  Yes, it is big but that means there's lots of places to choose from!  Seriously, we're in the process of narrowing our search down by looking on the Internet, considering favourite places from my own travelling experiences, and cheaper less fashionable departments which could now be opening up more to tourism by way of the budget airline effect (although maybe I'm too late with this idea).  We will then move across in December and make a concerted search in a chosen smaller area.  I have considered the Tarbes area, for instance, on the basis that gite income would be more likely to be earned in winter as well as summer, and that would be one, among several other, income streams.   Admittedly there's lots more research to be done in the next 8 months, which will no doubt fly by. 

[Dick Smith]

Yes, offer less. We did and got about 3k (I think) off of 20k. Mind you, they also told us the well water was drinkable, which it wasn't, which would have affected my offer had I but known the truth...

[Mark]

Hope you didn't suffer too much in the process of discovering about the water! 

[Cat]

It is worth remembering though, that the advertised price usually includes agency fees, and that the money going to the seller will be less than the stated price.  So if you make a lower offer, the actual percentage of profit for the seller falls off quite steeply (as the fees will stay roughly the same).

All depends whether you feel the original asking price is vastly inflated or not.

[Alcazar]

It will also depend on how long the property you offer on has been on the market. We could have got some properties cheaper, but the one we chose had only been on the market for a week, so we ended up paying the asking price.

At the time, (April 2002), houses were selling almost as fast as they appeared. It does seem to have calmed somewhat now.

Alcazar

[Richard-R]

Ditto about agents. Find the house you want then look at all the agents in the area to get the lowest price. The seller fees range from 4-5% to a wopping 12%. Our house with with 5 agents and the price diffence from the dearest to the cheapest asking price was over 20,000 €. Needless you say we used the cheapest agent to buy with.