Negotiating with Estate Agents

S

Spear

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If you're viewing a house and an estate agent asks you "have you got mortage approval in place?", what would you tell him/her? And if you had it in place, would you tell them the amount?

Would the answers to the above either improve your negotiating position or weaken it?
 
Tell them you have mortgage approval if you have it or are very sure you can get it but definitely do not tell them the amount. No point showing your hand.
 
By all means let them know that you have mortgage approval but never ever let them know the amount
 
Not having mortgage approval will hinder your negotiating position. Your offers might not be taken seriously. There is only serious negotiation with serious buyers, who have the cash, or can get it..
 
Having just bought a house (got keys last Monday :) ) having the approval made a serious difference, we went in with a very cheeky offer, which he brushed off straight away until we said we had the offer letter and were ready to roll as soon as the vendors were.

We most certainly didn't say how much we were approved for as is ended up closing for €30,000 less than what we were approved for and €55,000 less that the asking... Having the offer letter and being able to do a quick sale is the most important thing for vendors, seeing as banks just aren't giving out cash too easily these are real bargaining tools!!
 
HI,
Mortgage approval will hinder your negotiating position. Your offers might not be taken seriously.There is only serious negotiation with serious buyers who have the cash, or can get it..
 
Sargent_Duck said:
Having just bought a house (got keys last Monday :) ) having the approval made a serious difference, we went in with a very cheeky offer, which he brushed off straight away until we said we had the offer letter and were ready to roll as soon as the vendors were.

We most certainly didn't say how much we were approved for as is ended up closing for €30,000 less than what we were approved for and €55,000 less that the asking... Having the offer letter and being able to do a quick sale is the most important thing for vendors, seeing as banks just aren't giving out cash too easily these are real bargaining tools!!
Click to expand...

So how did you make up the 30k that you were not approved for ?
 
OK, so we put in an offer and the estate agent asked whether we had a letter from the bank, showing approval.

I'm not sure we should show this to the estate agent, as she could know how far we could actually stretch. This is actually an important consideration in this case, given the vendors need to sell this house in order to move on (i.e. chain); so there is a high probability the sale will not go through. As the estate agent has a lot in the area we are looking at, we will need to deal with her again, most probably.

Obviously the vendor has the choice to accept our offer or not and they can make up their own minds whether we are credible buyers.

My key question at this point, though, is whether it is in our interest to disclose proof of our approval in principle?
 
Sargent_Duck said:
We most certainly didn't say how much we were approved for as is ended up closing for €30,000 less than what we were approved for and €55,000 less that the asking...
Click to expand...

That is the kind of thing that put me off last summer, once agents heard that I could pay cash within 24 hours of the agreement, they were falling over themselves to offer better deals! So it just felt as if prices are still crazy.

Jim.
 
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