What to offer?

[stayhomeclub]

Hi,

We've found a house we like and are wanting to make an offer tomorrow. It's on the market for offers in the region of 225k. It came onto the market last weekend and when viewing today for a second time they are expecting at least one other offer tomorrow from a family who are currently renting.

However the house is being marketed for quite a high price (bordering on overpriced) as one round the corner arguably a bit bigger but in slightly worse condition sold for around 20k less in autumn. But the market in this area is overheated, particularly so in the last six months with lots of buyers chasing houses of this type and them rarely coming to market.

We've sold our property and are living with family so we can't really hang around for ages.

Our previous purchase fell through (Japanese Knotweed) but this property is more than we had agreed for that property so we would have to reapply for the mortgage. It would be affordable and the house needs no work but I have concerns about paying too much from a investment point of view.

Our position is strong with no chain but I can remember from selling that money talks! What would you offer?

If you lose out on this house, how long (generally) do you think it might be to find something else you like in your price range?

Are you looking at this as a long-term house, or a step on the property ladder?

If you really need to move sooner than later, and see it as a long-term house, I'd offer full price. The market will catch up to and exceed what you've paid in the longterm.

Agree with the above. If it's your forever home and you want it be prepared to offer the asking price making clear that is the limit and stress your buying position. If you want to go in lower then 5k

This should be our family home so hopefully a long term purchase without the need to
move again.

Suitable houses are infrequent to market although not unknown. Could be six months before another came up, no real urgency to find somewhere but I don't want to live with the inlaws long term ideally. I'm not too worried about finding another, just the time that might take and more that I might find myself in the same position at that point.

I'm concerned about sitting still in a rising market but equally have concerns re paying prices I think are too high. Can't influence the market though realistically. It used to be that houses hung around a bit and so there was no rush, a good position counted for a lot and deals could be done but that's all out of the window round here.

Can you comfortably afford a full price offer? Even if you overpay slightly, the market will catch up. And even if the market dips for a bit, it will rise again (at least, it always has in the past).

I guess the advantage of living longer with the in-laws is that your daily expenses are likely to be minimal, and you could save up more money for a deposit. But, in your shoes, I'd not like the idea of 6 months or more (potentially) of being a guest in someone else's home.

What is the most you can offer without having to go back to get a new mortgage offer?

To keep our existing mortgage offer, we would have to offer about 20k less than the advertised price.

It is affordable, when we got that mortgage offer for the house that fell through we'd kept some money back to do work to the house so it wasn't near the top limit for affordability but I wouldn't want to spend much more than the asking price on this particular property.

If houses don't come on very often and it's the place you'll be staying long term, I'd probably offer either the asking price or very close to it. We haven't to do that to get our house (really fast market here) and I haven't regretted it. An extra £5 or £10k over the life of the whole mortgage seemed pretty insignificant for the house we wanted and aren't ever planning on moving from.

Sorry, we had to do that to get our house.

Thanks for replying all, our asking price offer was accepted today

Yeah!!! Congratulations - hope everything goes smoothly to completion!