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Firstly what is a deadline sale or tender ?
Deadline sales and tenders are pretty similar. The Vendor will put a date on when they want all offers to be presented for a property. Purchasers are asked to make their best offer. If your offer is close to what the Vendor is looking and better than the other offers then often the Vendor will consider yours over others.
How to make your offer more attractive
1. Price
Price is a major factor ( not the only factor but the main one) in whether you get you offer accepted or not. This can be hard in a moving market. There are a few websites which offer free property insights i.e. www.homes.co.nz and Trademe property insights.
These can give you good guidance but you do have to keep in mind that these are based off sales data which gets updated when a property settles often 6-8 weeks after the offer is made. Which means you can be 2 months behind on changes in the market.
The other good guidance is to view a number of properties and if they come off the market ask the agent what they sold for. Depending on what stage the sale of the property is at, depends on what they may tell you, but this is a way of getting more up to date information.
How about looking at the G.V on a property? These can be very misleading, they are re-assessed once every three years and are based on a desktop estimation which bases the increase in house price on what the neighborhood and what the house has sold for previously. If a house has not been sold for 10 + years its G.V is often depressed further as its increases have only been on the desktop and not taken into account actual sales data for the property.
Ultimately getting your pricing right is difficult, you need to determine what you are comfortable with and go from there.
2. Clean offer
This is tricky for first home buyers. The basic premise is if you can present an unconditional offer, or an offer with few conditions then this will be more attractive to Vendor than an agreement with lots of conditions. If the offer prices for the top offers are close a Vendor is more likely to go for the agreement with less conditions or better yet an unconditional offer.
Problem as a first home buyer is being able to present an offer with few conditions. An unconditional offer means you must complete the settlement otherwise their are financial penalties so you want to be sure.
The main conditions people consider putting in ( which is ideal when there isn’t much interest in a property or a slower property market)
1. Builders Report. Often a builder will see things that we cant. Professional building inspectors are another step up from having your friendly builder look at a house for you. The often have moisture testers and other tools to look for issues that can’t always been seen by viewing only.
If you have time, before making an offer you can try to get a builder through to look at the property. Otherwise you can make your offer subject to getting a building report or not. If you don’t you wont be able to pull out of the agreement if there are major issues.
Note the agreement does provide limited protection i.e the Vendor does warrant ( unless this has been crossed out) that if they have done any work to the property which required building consent that this was obtained and signed off by council. Doesn’t help if the work was done prior to the Vendor owning the property though.
2. Finance
You shouldn’t make an unconditional offer on a property unless you have confirmed finance. As a first home buyer you should talk to you mortgage broker or bank to get pre-approval. We have some great contacts if you are looking for a mortgage broker.
However even with a pre-approval you need to check what conditions are on the pre-approval. Often the bank needs to approve of the specific property, and this may include obtaining a valuation. If it doesn’t require a valuation then you can ask the bank to approve the property prior to making the offer, that way you can remove the finance condition.
If they require a valuation then you could try to get a valuation prior to the offer close date. However if you are unsuccessful you will still have to pay your fees for getting a valuation which can get expensive if you miss out on a couple of properties
3. Council files / Lim / Title
Always good to check these. Council files are usually available in a short space of time ( if not provided by the agent). These can usually be reviewed prior to the offer date along with the title. If you are interested in a property and would like these reviewed get in contact with us.
If you are unable to get yourself in a position to remove the above conditions and want to include them, then you can look at how you can reduce the time on them. Usually conditions allow 10 – 15 working days to satisfy them. If you can get your solicitor, bank and builder inline to look at these within 5 days then you could look at reducing the timeframe
3. Timing
Its always good to ask the agent what the Vendors situation is, and ascertain what their timing for settlement would be. I.e. if it was an investment property and they have removed the tenants they will want to settle as soon as possible. If they are looking at buying another property and need time then they may want a longer settlement.
Changes to the settlement date can have an affect both monetary terms and how well it fits with the other parties plans.
If you need any assistance with making offers on properties or just need to chat to get some reassurance then give us a call and see our great fees below
First Home, see our great first home rates and information here
Like to know what its going to cost, we certainly do! So we fix our fees so you don’t have to worry!
With a mortgage $1,550.00 inclusive of GST and disbursements
Without a mortgage $1,400.00 Inclusive of GST and disbursements
What does this cover?
a) 1 hour pre contract discussion or review (if required). If you need to discuss
b) Discussion, negotiation and confirmation of your contract conditions ( if required)
c) If you have a mortgage, arranging for its discharge and repayment on settlement
d) Attending to the settlement and generally making sure that you get paid prior to handing over the keys and the title to the property.
Without a Mortgage $1,550.00 inclusive of GST and Disbursements*
With a Mortgage $1,750.00 inclusive of GST and Disbursements *
What does this cover?
a) 1 hour pre contract discussion or review (if required). While we have pretty good guides on the topic, if you want specific advice in respect of a contract, the conditions you do and don’t need, or need a title reviewed this can help.
b) Discussion, negotiation and confirmation of your contract conditions ( i.e. builder finds out the roof needs to be replaced, do you cancel, try to get a price reduction or just live with it?)
d) Advice on your loan ( if you are getting a loan) and meeting the banks requirements for you being provided legal advice on entering into the loan.
e) The registration of one mortgage ( if you are getting a loan) and the transfer of the property into your name
f) Attending to the settlement and generally making sure that when you pay the purchase price you get the property into your name
*Note sometimes to review a title we need to search instruments on the title, these are not included in our fixed price ( as they could range from one search to twenty. We will charge you extra disbursements if these are needed, but the good news the Land Registrar charges us $6.00 per search, so its not likely to make much impact on your fee.
Refinancing your loan to another bank? Our fixed fee $820.00 Inclusive of GST and disbursements
Refinancing your loan with your current bank and the mortgage needs altered $500.00 Inclusive of GST and disbursement.
Pre-contract title report $600 – $1,000.0 inclusive of GST. We provide a range because some titles may have three registered instruments and some twenty. Once we look at the title we can give you a fixed price.