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How to make an offer on a property

Once you have found the property that you want to make your home – the next step is to make an offer.
Here’s how to do it…

Step 1: Do your Homework 

Ask the estate agent these questions:

Step 2: Know how much you can afford & work out your offer

Working out your offer:
Based on your research, you now need to work out how much you want to offer.
If the property you want needs a little bit of work, you want to go in with your first offer between 1 % and 5% less than the asking price. This gives you a bit of leeway to negotiate and increase your offer if needed.

For example, Property is advertised at £150,000
1%  less = £148,500 (£1,500 less than the asking price)
2% less = £147,000 (£3,000 less than the asking price)
3% less = £145,500 (£4,500 less than the asking price)
4% less = £144,000 (£6,000 less than the asking price)
5% less = £143,500 (£7,500 less than the asking price)

Don’t forget your offer needs to reflect the condition of the property and the prices in the local area to be considered seriously.

Step 3: Get organised

Step 4: Be personal to get ahead

Now it’s time to make your offer

  1. You can do this verbally, either in person or by phone, but…
  2. Always follow it up in writing, usually by email these days, so it is kept on record.
  3. We suggest you write out your email offer first – then read the main points out to the estate agent on the phone. After the phone call send them the offer by email straight away.
  4. Make it clear that your offer is: Subject to Contract & Survey
    1. Subject to contract means: the final sale takes place only when lawyers have exchanged legally binding document
    2. Subject to survey means– this allows for the cost of any faults or issues to be taken into account once your surveyor has checked the property out
  5. Finally, ask that the property is taken off the market and no longer advertised for viewings. This reduces the risk of someone coming in with a higher offer, known as gazumping.
  6. The agent is then obliged to pass the information to the vendor (the current owner) for consideration.
  7. Don’t forget to ask the estate agent for confirmation in writing (email is easiest) that they have received your offer and have passed it on to the seller for consideration.

The seller may want to haggle with you on the price so be prepared to go back and forth with a slightly higher price but do not go over your maximum budget.

Offer Template – we’ve created an ‘Offer Template’ which you can download and amend to suit your needs. Get a free ‘Offer Template’ now.

More useful information:

If your offer is accepted – you need to do 3 things
How a survey can help you re-negotiate the price you have offered
Video – What happened to one family who didn’t get a survey
Which survey should I choose?
What does it mean when my solicitor says, “We need to do the searches”?

Choose Your Survey