House Prices and Haggling

[andrewandjane]

HI

keen to know what sort of flexibility there is in auckland house prices eg a house on waiheke going for 300 000 what sort of offers are sensible?

do people pay the asking prices of offer a lot less and move up?
if so what sort of margin is there for getting money off?

ta

Andrew

[Angelonthemove]

Not in Auckland but house genrally go for 10+% MORE than the asking or BEO price. Thats if you are lucky enough to be the top price that comes out of the hat if its a popular house. Makes budgeting hard.

See threads on housing prices on previous post. Its all very confusing to those of us new to NZ.

Angela

[willsken]

We aren't in Auckland but we have just had an offer on a house accepted. First off we offered 10% below asking price but they said no and after haggling they accepted $13,000 below the asking price. It hasn't gone through yet and they can still accept a higher offer if we can't produce the funding within 5 days of them telling us about the higher offer.

[sizzlingbadger]

Try and find comparable properties and what they sold for. The current valuation on the property as well is a good starting point but sometimes the selling price is way over that

It depends also on the interest in the property and how long the property has been on the market. Ask yourselves what you feel comfortable paying for the property and start a bit below that, you never know you could get a good bargain

[StevieD]

I have been told similar to this, it pays to haggle because let's face it, like most things in the property market, they are there to be knocked down (or fall down oops)

[Dave in NZ]

The golden rule is never offer the asking price .allways come in lower but not too low,say 10%.This will probably be rejected but then you come up until an acceptable price is met.We offered 10% less on our land and ended up saving 5%. As said already try to find out the average price in the area.Some houses are overpriced.
Useful sites are
http://www.linz.govt.nz/audiences/pr...ers/index.html
www.rpnzreports.co.nz
www.terranet.co.nz

Hope this helps

Dave and Caroline

[diforsyth]

I bought the book "The Streetwise Homebuyer" from the same company as "Where to Live in Auckland" and have to say it's worth a read. One thing that jumped out at me was to ask the vendor how they arrived at their asking price.

David.

[MarkS]

Hi,

We're going through the homebuying process at the moment. It's very different to what we're used to in the UK - there you would see an asking price and offer 5 - 10% below. Here you see an asking price and have to offer 5 - 10% above! Very difficult to get our head around!

In fact, we looked at one house recently where the price dropped 10% or so before we looked at it - "there's a story there", said the estate agent. Turns out the sellers were English, and so they'd told the agents to price it at 5% above what they actually hoped to get. The agent then had a word and they re-priced it at 5% below what they actually hoped to get!

Not to say that what Caroline & Dave say above is wrong, but I believe the market for buying land is significantly different to the housing market.

cheers
Mark

[Ana&Steve]

Thanks for the links, Dave and Caroline!
Ana

[Dave in NZ]

This article gives you an idea about the process of buying a house in NZ and one of the sentences says " Unless the market is red hot it is normal to offer less than the asking price. www.enz.org/buying-a-house-in-new-zealand.html
Obviously if several people are after one house then you may well have to pay more than the asking price. Very good houses in New Zealand are snapped up very quickly and you may have to pay a bit more but houses that have been hanging around a bit usually an offer will be accepted.Obviously you need to get any house checked out by an expert.
Hope this helps

Dave and Caroline