How to word a "best and final offer"

[Ladymuck]

House came onto the market last weekend. Fixed viewing time of 1 hour. After which there were at least 3 offers, including ours at 95% of asking price. So we now go to a "fixed and final offer" process whereby we, and anyone else interested, get to out in a final offer by a given deadline.

We will obviously include a price, and our ability to proceed. Is there anything else that I need to think about including in an offer? We'll ask for them to take it off the market and put a "sale agreed" sign up. Anything else? Suddenly feel as if I have moved to Scotland or back to the property boom...

Wow-where in the country are you?
(being nosey of course!)

Surrey.

This will be the second time we have gone to best and final offer bids in 6 weeks! And we lost out last time despite bidding 4% above the asking price!

that you have a mortgage in place and can show proof if necessary.

Some people waffle on about how it will be an ideal home for bringing up their family and how they want to be involved in the local community etc but i didn't do that. That wouldn't mean jack to me if I were the vendor. I would just want comfort in the knowledge that the buyer could deliver in the right time frame.

That said, when we did this recently we lost out, but we walked away happy in the knowledge that we didn't want to pay any more than we offered as the renovations would have cost us ££Ks and some fool other person took on such a huge project.

when I was selling one, the agent asked bidders to bring in their mortgage offers and proof of other availability of funds (e.g. bank statement if they claimed to be a cash buyer). You can't trust people to tell the truth.

Otherwise you might accept the highest offer, from someone who claimed to be readt to complete in four weeks, then find out they were dependent on selling their old house and winning the lottery. By which time you might have told all the other bidders to clear off, and they might have bought somewhere else.

I'd just make sure the agent emphasises your ability to proceed (if it's good). I just accepted an offer 5k below the highest offer received because I had a better sense about the lower bidders in terms of their ability to proceed.

You could offer to be flexible on completion date. Emphasise you're keen to exchange asap (likely to go down well with sellers).

You could add 'subject to survey' if you've any nerves about the house, but personally I wouldn't - you might put them off and you can still review the situatio post-survey anyway.

Price

Anything you definitely want to be included in the sale eg any appliances

Funding position - where is the money coming from and how far has the approval process got

If you need to sell a property and if so where that sale has got to (incl details of the agent you are selling with)

Flexibility on timing

We had exactly this situation, and I put together an email listing (as others have suggested)

• price
• our ability to move in their preferred timeframe ie. fast
• the fact that I wanted our final offer to include items like curtains
• that we had an AIP, and what the LTV was of our mortgage (estate agent requested this and said that if it was a high % LTV this could go against us)

I also wrote a couple of sentences about how we had fallen in love with the place and thought it would be an idyllic set-up for our twins. According to the EA this is what swung it in the end, soppy buggers

Agree with what everyone else has said. We've done this twice now - once where we eventually pulled out (long story) but we "won" the bidding process (even though I know now that we weren't the highest bidder) and the second time, for the house that we're currently in. Do you know who is selling? Ours was a probate sale, and we'd been advised that it was the 3 children that were selling their parents' house. Obviously included details of what we were willing to pay, that we had a mortgage in place, that my husband was a solicitor and his firm would do the conveyancing and therefore make it as quick as they needed it to be, could exchange in 6 weeks if necessary. And then we included the intangible stuff - that we loved the house, we were going to make it our home for the next X years, that our children loved it and we weren't developers who would rip it apart and sell it on for a profit. Obviously worked :-)