Advice for Buyers in 2017

Now is a moment of opportunity if you are willing to think outside of the box. There have probably been bidding wars as long as you have been looking for a property, and when you saw a price you simply wondered how much you would have to pay over the asking price in order to own the house.

Happily that is no longer the case. It is still true that if you are only looking at the new listings you can still find yourself in competition. A colleague of mine was in multiple offers just a couple of weeks ago and there were still 18 offers!

One of my buyers, however, recently found a listing that they liked that had been on the market for about 5 days. Although houses nearby had sold for similar prices, the price on this particular house didn’t work for my buyers so I suggested that we put an offer in at a price that did work for them. Their offer was well below the asking price, plus they wanted to put in an offer with a condition in it. Previously, if a buyer were to put a condition in their offer, it almost invariably ensured that they would not get the house, but the market has changed and so we put the offer in exactly as the buyer requested.

What happened? The seller accepted the offer.

This is a market where all of the rules are changing. This is a moment for you to approach buying a house in a position of strength instead of the sellers always being in the driver’s seat. There will, of course, be some sellers who are not willing to negotiate, as is their right, but if you are willing to be creative there are opportunities to be had.

This is not to suggest that the market is in decline and that prices are expected to be reduced permanently, but to say that there are some sellers at the moment who are very serious about selling their property and are willing to negotiate. I would expect that we will actually have a strong fall market but it will be more balanced than we have seen in many years.

Take the current market very seriously and you could very well find yourself the proud owner of a very special property.