Doing a part ex for a new build

Do a search for username ClareMarie. She did a part ex for a new build last year and posted recently on another thread asking similar questions. Think she said she didn't get much (if any) off the asking price but got lots of other things thrown in.

We're theoretically in the middle of this. Firstly, do you know that they are willing to consider it? I ask this for two reasons. One, they often work regionally, so might not deal with a house in Birmingham to buy in Leeds. Two, many of them are withdrawing part-ex.

We've negotiated a discount on the new house. We didn't put an offer in as such, but said we needed an incentive as there would be a shortfall between what we were offered for ours (not part ex, but Bellway's Express Mover, where they, in theory find you a buyer at a low price), and what we needed to get to make it viable.

We're considering just slashing the price of ours on the open market, as we don't really want to buy the Bellway house, but it was a way out of our current one.

Developers will do all they can to keep the sale price as high on paper for possible - so they may offer you a 'deal' but it will generally be in the form of a deposit, or extras such as carpeting, landscaping etc.

When we bought our place 2 years ago, the mortgage company valued the property lower than the developers wanted for it. The only reason we managed to get them to drop the price (on paper, we were still paying the same amount in reality) was because they only had 2 properties like it in the area.

We looked at part-ex with a few developers at the time, but the valuations were way way too low. In the end, we had a 'managed move' which meant we were marketed by the same EA that the developer was using. It meant a tight deadline, and the house was pitched at a lower price than if we'd more time.

Gaah, thanks everyone. I'll search for that thread, thanks. There's no way OH will even consider paying over the odds for a house in this climate (and rightly so) so I imagine this will be another option that's chucked out.

We haven't looked into the situation in any detail yet (re the part ex Leeds / Brum scenario) but we're going to have a look at a few estates tonight so wanted an idea of what we're dealing with potentially. The ones we've seen are national builders so I don't know whether that will help in that respect? We've slashed and slashed our price some more with no joy - God knows what we're going to end up doing.

We are in Sheffield so not far from you nd we are looking at moving. We have visited a number of new build sites and not one of them does part ex, they all do assisted moves, whereby you still market your property through an estate agent

Good luck x

Bellway are national, but their operations are split by region, so they wouldn't consider a house in another region. I know this because we have another house in another region, and H asked if they could "Express Move" both houses.

It's all a bit rubbish, isn't it?! If this doesn't work out for us I don't know what we'll do either. We had our house on the market in 2005/06, when the market was bouyant, and no-one wanted it then, so what hope do we have now?!

Good luck, if you find the magic answer, let me know!

Hi, we got £25k off the asking price of our new build (Laing) - dont see the harm in putting in silly offer like we did! - not sure bout part ex though

We nearly did a part ex in late 2005. They offered us market value for our house at the time. That wasn't their initial offer. Initially they offered us well over 20% less, but we just said 'no ta then - we can't afford to do it unless we get £x amount for ours' and kept saying that until they offered us market value (the house next door to us actually sold for less than we were offered a few months later). But our hearts weren't entirely in it, so we weren't bothered if it didn't work out, therefore it was quite easy to do.

I would have been happy to accept a lower offer if the amount was recouped somewhere else.

I can't remember who the builder was, but was one of the nationals. And obviously the market is different now.

We're in a new house now (smaller local builder), and we had an offer accepted on this place, which was spring last year. We'd already sold our house, but we thought this place was over priced so thought nothing ventured nothing gained. We had a few other options - this was our fave, but we were prepared to go for something else if we couldn't get it at the right price.

Thanks for those replies, only just seen them. It's encouraging to know that it can happen - we went out to see the development we had our eye on last night and it does look nice enough - like you though Pipster, our heart isn't massively in it so we can afford to drive a bit harder on it. OH is calling today to see if they'll even consider a part ex with Birmingham as a starting point and we'll go from there.

Maybe it depends on the area but our experience has been different to a lot of the posters experience. It's a long story but FIL was going to move in with us and we were going to buy a bigger house at the start of this year. Lots of builders said they didn't do part-ex but then swayed and said they would 'consider' it. They instructed three valuations and eventually gave us a figure which were very pleased with, it was about £5k less than our neighbours had sold for a month before, and considering we wouldn't be paying estate agent fees, we were very more than pleased.

We also negotiated on price, very hard, and they came up with a very good discount and a few other bits thrown in. Things have changed with regards to discounts and extras since the market changed. Builders are finding they can't do the paying deposit and adding extras as an incentive because when they are valued the mortgage companies are refusing mortgages, so they are more likely to take money off the price of the house at the moment.

We've always taken the view everything is negoitiable and negotiate hard, don't pay over the odds and be prepared to walk away. Lots of builders our way are suspending building and we've found even after five months builders are calling us to try to make a sale as they are just not selling, or people want to buy but can't sell.

Thanks Lady G, sounds really positive. OH has spoken to the sales staff at the site just now and they would certainly consider part ex - or "sell and move" as they prefer to call it - and I'm encouraged as at this early stage they've already said there's room for movement on both the price they offer us and the price they'll take for the house. If they're giving that much away in the first conversation I'm feeling more hopeful already.

We're going to look at the showhouse on Monday and we'll go from there!