What is Price By Negotiation?

Date Published: 13 July 2023

Until recently, selling a house by Auction has been the most popular method of selling in Auckland.  It takes advantage of the excitement in the market and pits buyers directly against each other. In most of the other cities and towns around NZ however, selling a house “price by negotiation” has remained one of the more popular methods.  With the cool down in the Auckland housing market, we are beginning to see this trend start in our largest city too.

So what does price by negotiation mean?

Price by negotiation indicates the vendor is willing to take an offer at any time.  It differs slightly from a Deadline Sale where a vendor will accept all offers up to a certain date.  Price by negotiation is an open-ended timeline.  However, once an offer has been submitted and conditionally accepted, further offers must wait for that initial deal to be cancelled before their offer can be accepted.  Even with price by negotiation, it pays not to wait around too long.

How to get ready to make an offer?

You should ideally have your finance pre-approved before making an offer.  An offer without a finance clause is a much stronger temptation for the Vendor.  If you’re competing against other offers, the less conditions on the offer, the better.  You all know where to click to get the pre-approval stage started!

You should always get a lawyer to check the offer before submitting it.  A Sale and Purchase is a legally binding contract.  Even a small mistake can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

What types of offers can you make?

There are essentially two types of price by negotiation offers you can make. An unconditional offer or a conditional offer.

Unconditional offers to purchase a property

A very straightforward offer to buy the property. If the offer is accepted, the contract is locked in. We strongly recommend talking to all your property experts before ever making an unconditional offer.

Conditional offer

You can add certain conditions to your offer that, once fulfilled, will make the contract unconditional. These conditions could include (but are not limited to):

• finance condition
• conditional upon the sale of your current home
• conditional upon certain checks of the house

What happens once your offer is accepted?

If you have conditions – finance, building report, valuations etc – in your offer, then you will have a set amount of time to get these ticked off before telling your Solicitor to go unconditional.  At this point, you will need to pay the deposit into the bank.  The deposit is usually 10% but can be varied and is not usually refundable if you want to pull out of the deal.  Going unconditional is not to be taken lightly so check with your Solicitor before confirming.

Summary

There are some pros and cons of buying a Price By Negotiation property

Pros:

• Your timeline can be a little more flexible than an auction
• You can agree on a price before having to pay legal fees, Registered Valuation reports etc

Cons:

• It can be hard to know what price to offer if no indication is given

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