What should I offer? - Leave some petrol in the tank!

The most important thing to know is not to show your hand too early in the negotiation. Be aware that any offer that you make could be let out to your competition. Surely not I hear you cry!

Now this has nothing to do with the estate agents letting slip your offer to the competion.

This is how is happens -

You make an offer. The estate agent tells the seller. They are duty bound to do that. Lets assume that the offer is given early on in the marketing - say in the first couple of days of the property coming on to the market.

The next viewer comes in and asks the seller "How's marketing going?" The answer that comes from the seller is " Fantastic! We have been on the market a week and we have already got an offer of INSERT YOUR OFFER HERE"

The price then moves from the "Offers Over" price to "Offers Over " your offer.

Unless you know that the negotiation will be extremely quick then I would always leave some petrol in the tank!