If you have a house or flat for sale in Chiswick - here's how to avoid being gazundered. Christian Harper of Chiswick estate agent Oliver Finn shares his know-how to help you avoid the pitfalls.
One result of the challenging house market conditions has been the rise of gazundering – buyers cutting their offer at the last minute. Estate agents have reported that buyers have sliced hundreds of thousands of pounds from offer prices just hours before exchange.
Christian Harper : “With the average price of a Chiswick property at around half a million pounds, you can’t really blame buyers for trying to manipulate the deal and take advantage of credit crunched homeowners.
“The best way for sellers to handle this pitfall is to take control of the situation and get the sale completed as quickly as possible”. Here are some top tips on handling prospective buyers.
Down to earth pricing
The best way to avoid being exploited by prospective buyers is to set a realistic price in the first place. There is no excuse for pricing yourself out of current market conditions. If you can’t sell at your asking price, the answer isn’t to put it on with another agent, the answer is to drop your price and keep reducing the price until you find the level at which you get an offer.
Don’t accept the offer straight away
Once you’ve got a buyer, it doesn’t mean you have to accept the offer, but it does give you a clue as to what price your property can achieve.
Instead, say something like “I need a bit of time to find out if I can achieve a similar percentage reduction on what I’m trying to buy”. If you are successful, you can always return to your buyer. Also if you are too quick to agree to a negotiation the buyer may think they can reduce the offer even further.
Manage your loss or reduction
Using Oliver Finn will enable you to manage any drop in the price of your property. Now is not the time to be handing over £25,000 in fees to an estate agent to market your property, when you can pay 6,000 for any type of house for sale in Chiswick – size and value irrelevant. The most we’ve saved a client in fees is £43,000.00. We regularly save our vendors between £5,000 and £15,000.
Exploit the market conditions to your advantage
If you need to move home it doesn’t matter if you lose some of your asking price as long as you can take advantage of lower prices further up the chain. If you do accept a lower offer, make sure you ask for concessions of your own. You could request a survey is carried out within seven days for example. There’s nothing which tests a buyers resolve like parting with cash .
Protect yourself from exploitation
You’d service and wash your car before selling so make sure you’re property is in good condition and looking its best. Last-minute shocks regarding building defects are amongst the most common causes of buyers reducing their offer.
Build a strategy with your estate agent
This doesn’t mean putting it on with the agent and if it hasn’t sold in six weeks put it on with another agent. Review the situation after a couple of weeks. Listen to honest advice from seasoned professionals but be wary of anyone you feel is offering advice just to get the deal done.
