How to Make an Offer on a House: What First Home Buyers Get Wrong in a Private Treaty Sale

You found the place. The inspection went well. The agent was warm, you can already picture your couch in the lounge room, and now there is a number sitting in your head and a knot sitting in your stomach. For a lot of first home buyers, this is the bit nobody really prepared them for. It is also the bit where a few thousand dollars can quietly slip out the door while everyone is smiling.

So we asked two people who play different roles in the same transaction to walk through it with us.

First, Mark Horvat of The Acquiry. Mark spent more than twenty years at the senior end of real estate. Managing Director of Foxtons in London. Head of Sales at DiJones here in New South Wales. Then he switched sides and started representing buyers instead. He built and trained the kind of agents buyers now negotiate with, which is exactly why his read on the other side is worth paying attention to. Second, the Titlespace conveyancing team, who step in once a price is agreed and the contract needs to stand up.

Here is how Mark describes it: “I’ve spent two decades training the very agents buyers now negotiate against. If you understand the selling process how the other side thinks, the conversation changes.” Ask him about his style and the answer is short. “analytical and commercially disciplined.” He represents buyers for leverage, not just for access.

None of this is about being pushy. It is not about playing hardball or treating the agent like an enemy. Learning how to make an offer on a house really comes down to three things: knowing who you are actually talking to, knowing what evidence sits behind a good number, and knowing which parts of the deal keep working for you long after the price is agreed. Let us start with the basics, because the kind of sale you are in changes the whole game.

Private treaty is how most property in Australia gets sold. The home goes on the market at a price, or a price guide, and buyers negotiate directly with the selling agent until the vendor accepts an offer. No public bidding. No auctioneer counting down. You put a number forward, the agent carries it to the seller, and the answer comes back as yes, no, or how about this instead.

Now here is the part that matters most, and it is easy to forget when the agent is being lovely to you. In a private treaty sale you are negotiating one on one with the listing agent, and that agent works for the seller. Their job is to get the highest price and the best terms for the vendor. Not for you. That does not make them dishonest or shady. It just means you need to understand which side of the table they are on.

An auction runs the opposite way. Buyers bid in the open on the day, the sale is unconditional, and there is no cooling-off period to fall back on. If you are still weighing up which path you are on, our guide to auction mistakes for buyers covers the auction side in detail. This article sticks with private treaty, where you have far more room to move, both on the price and on the conditions.

This one trips up almost everyone, and the answer has two halves that only work in the right order.

Yes, sort out your conveyancer before you start making offers. Not so they can review a contract straight away, but so they are ready to move the second you need them. Choose who you are using. Tell them you are actively house hunting. Confirm they can turn a contract around quickly when the time comes. That groundwork is what pays off later.

But make your offer first. In New South Wales, nothing is binding until contracts are exchanged, so putting an offer forward does not trap you. Pay to have a contract formally reviewed before your offer is even live and you are spending money on a deal the agent might still be quietly shopping to three other buyers. If the vendor goes with one of them, you have just paid to review a deal that no longer exists.

The sequence that actually works is simple. You make your offer. The moment it is accepted in principle, your conveyancer reviews the contract fast, before exchange, while you still have room to ask for changes. Then you exchange, with the terms checked and the protections in place.

This is where the commercial side and the legal side meet. Mark’s lane is the offer itself: when to move, how to structure it, and what makes it credible. Titlespace’s lane is the contract: checking the document before exchange and making sure the deal on paper matches the deal you think you made. The practical takeaway is simple. Be ready on both fronts. Make the offer when the number stacks up, then move quickly to legal review before exchange. That is what keeps you competitive without leaving yourself exposed. New to all this? what is conveyancing lays out what a conveyancer actually does, and conveyancer vs solicitor covers the difference between the two.

This article is written for New South Wales buyers. If you are buying in another state, get state-specific advice before you rely on any offer or exchange process.

After two decades on the selling side, Mark sees the same short list of mistakes turn up again and again with first home buyers in private treaty sales.

Telling the agent your maximum, or wearing your heart on your sleeve. A good agent will gently fish for how much you love the place and how far you can stretch. Every flicker of urgency, every budget limit you let slip, quietly becomes the seller’s leverage. You do not have to be cold about it. You just do not need to announce that this is “the one” and that you “could maybe push to $850,000.” Keep your top number to yourself.

Forgetting whose side the agent is on. First home buyers often treat the listing agent as a friendly guide steering them through the process. They are not that. They are skilled, usually very likeable, and contractually working for the vendor. Mark represents buyers only, which he frames as being about leverage rather than access. You do not have to hire anyone to use the insight. You do have to remember what the agent is actually being paid to do.

Making an offer without finance pre-approval. Few things sink your credibility faster. An offer from a buyer with confirmed pre-approval and a deposit ready to go is worth more to a seller than a slightly higher offer from someone who reckons they “should be fine with the bank.” Pre-approval lets you move with confidence and negotiate from a position of strength. Without it, you are asking the vendor to take you on faith, and faith is in short supply when there is real money on the table.

Anchoring to the asking price instead of the evidence. The listed price is what the vendor wants. It is not what the market will pay. Anchor to it without your own evidence, whether the guide is high or low, and you either overpay or you lowball yourself clean out of contention. Treat the asking price as the opening line of a conversation, not the final word on what the place is worth.

Ignoring days on market and comparable sales. This is the evidence base that should be driving your number, full stop. What have similar homes in the suburb actually sold for lately? How long has this particular one been sitting there? Is the vendor already trimming the price? Comparable sales and days on market tell you whether the guide is realistic and where your offer ought to land. Skip the homework and you either overpay or assume a price is fixed when there is plenty of give in it.

Not moving decisively to lock it in. In a private treaty sale in New South Wales, there is no binding deal until contracts are exchanged. A verbal “yes” from the agent can be knocked out by a later, higher offer from someone you never even saw. That risk has a name. It is called gazumping, and our guide to how to avoid gazumping explains it in full. Moving quickly and cleanly to exchange is a negotiation skill in its own right, not just a legal box to tick.

Treating price as the only thing you are negotiating. This is the one most first home buyers miss entirely, and it leads straight into the next section.

Price is the headline. It is not the whole story. Settlement length, deposit size, and the conditions attached to your offer are all chips you can play, and using them well is very often how a first home buyer beats a bidder with deeper pockets.

Think about who is actually selling. A vendor with a young family who has already bought their next place might value a longer settlement far more than an extra few thousand dollars. A vendor who just wants the thing done and dusted might take a clean, low-condition offer over a higher one bristling with get-outs. As Mark frames it, the real skill is structuring the offer itself as leverage, not just naming a number and hoping. A slightly lower price with cleaner terms can beat a slightly higher price with harder terms, time after time.

Here is how that looks in practice. Say a three-bedroom home is guided at $980,000, and your comparable sales evidence puts fair value somewhere between $960,000 and $985,000. The agent lets slip that the vendor has already bought their next home and badly wants a longer settlement, so they are not stuck carrying two mortgages at once.

Buyer A offers $985,000 with a six-week settlement and a subject-to-finance condition.

Buyer B offers $980,000. Buyer B also brings a twelve-week settlement that lines up perfectly with the vendor’s move, a 10% deposit ready to go, and finance pre-approval already confirmed.

On paper, Buyer B is $5,000 cheaper. In the vendor’s eyes, Buyer B is the safer, simpler deal that solves their actual problem. In a private treaty negotiation, that is very often the offer that wins. The terms wrapped around your number can be worth more to the seller than the number itself, and they cost you a lot less than bidding the price up.

When you are working out how much to offer, anchor it to your comparable sales evidence, the days on market, and your own walk-away number. Not the asking price. And definitely not whatever the agent says the other buyers are “around.” One more thing. If the guide looks suspiciously low for the area, read it carefully. Underquoting, where a price guide sits below what the vendor will actually accept, is a known tactic, and underquoting explains it in detail.

Agreeing a price is the exciting part. Getting the terms right is the part that protects you. Here is what your conveyancer is reading the moment your offer is accepted, working fast so you can exchange with confidence.

The contract as a whole. Your conveyancer is not just checking the special conditions. They are checking the front-page details, the parties, the property, the deposit, the settlement date, the inclusions, the standard terms, and any extra clauses added for this deal. If an agreed inclusion, repair, timing point, or payment term is missing or misstated, it needs to be fixed before exchange.

What has actually been agreed. A lot of disputes start with assumptions. The dishwasher the agent said was staying. The curtains the seller verbally agreed to leave. The longer settlement everyone discussed over the phone. If it matters, it needs to be reflected properly in the contract before you sign. A handshake is not a clause, and a friendly verbal promise is not enough once the deal moves forward.

Cooling-off rights. In New South Wales, a private treaty residential sale comes with a cooling-off period of 5 business days after contracts are exchanged under section 66S of the Conveyancing Act 1919. Pull out during that window and you forfeit 0.25% of the purchase price. You can waive the cooling-off period by giving the vendor a section 66W certificate signed by your conveyancer, solicitor or barrister, which is sometimes used to make an offer more attractive. For the full detail, see the NSW cooling-off period.

Title and risk issues. Your conveyancer is also checking for the less obvious problems that do not show up in the sales pitch: easements, restrictions, unapproved structures, unusual title issues, or anything else that changes the risk you are taking on. This is the part that stops a good-looking deal from turning into an expensive surprise.

There is no single magic formula, but there is a sound method. Start from comparable sales of similar homes in the same area over the last few months. Adjust for condition, for position, for how this particular property stacks up against them. Then factor in how long it has been listed and any sign the vendor is motivated to move. That gives you a realistic value range. Your opening offer usually sits below that range, with room to climb up to your considered ceiling if you need it.

If you take away nothing else, take this. Getting the price right is about evidence, discipline, and never forgetting that the agent works for the seller. Getting the deal right is about the contract terms that keep protecting you once that price is agreed. First home buyers who win at private treaty treat both as a single job. And they line up both kinds of help before they make the offer, not scrambling for it afterwards.

When you are ready, the Titlespace team can review your contract fast once your offer is accepted, explain every clause in plain language, and give you a fixed-fee quote with no nasty surprises. Have us lined up before you make the offer, so we can move the moment the vendor says yes.

Mark Horvat is the founder of The Acquiry, a Sydney buyer’s agency that represents buyers only. Mark has more than two decades at senior levels of real estate across Australia, the UK and the US, including as Managing Director of Foxtons in London and Head of Sales at DiJones in New South Wales, and holds an MBA from Imperial College London. The Acquiry offers full buyer representation and a buying advisory service for clients who want to stay hands-on, including first home buyers. His market commentary in this article reflects his Sydney and New South Wales experience.

Titlespace is a digital-first conveyancing firm handling property transactions across NSW, VIC, QLD, SA and the ACT, with fixed fees and contract reviews turned around fast.