Best and final offer

[MaMaMaMySharona]

My DP and I have found our dream house, well within our budget and in our perfect location - a bit too good to be true!

We put an offer in of asking price yesterday as we knew there were a lot of people interested and didn't want to mess about. We're now at the stage where we're neck and neck with another pair of first time buyers and have been asked to give our best and final offer by 5pm today.

The house is on the market for £315k, our top offer would be £325k as we know it's undervalued compared to other houses in the area and it's also somewhere we're planning on staying for a long time, so we don't see a huge amount of risk in spending the extra £10k. We can easily afford it.

Do we risk offering a midway amount, say £322,500, to bring our mortgage down slightly but potentially not offer as much as the other couple? Or do we just go straight in for max?

What would you do!?

If it’s your dream house and you plan on being there forever (obviously unless circumstances change) then I’d just go straight in. You don’t want to regret losing your dream house when you can afford the max anyway! (Obviously all in my opinion and not definitely the way you should do things)

This is what I'm leaning towards Fairy ! I would be gutted if we missed out because the other couple had their best and final at £323k or something!

Go for max, if it's dream house and you lost it by a few thousand you would be gutted!

Cross posted

Offer your maximum, but make it an odd figure, so instead of 325k offer 325.149 or something like that, within your limits. Just to give you the edge over someone with the same figure in mind. Good luck!

MovingThisYear that's really great advice, thank you! Can't wait to be one of the posters on here waiting for exchange !

Yes definitely put the odd figure in and do not round up to an obvious number as that is what everybody does and you should then come out on top.

Bear in mind that it is not just the figure itself that matters. The vendor and their EA will be looking for the best buyer, which may not be the buyer who puts forward the highest offer.

Make sure your buying position is clearly laid out, including information about any finance arrangements, expected timeframe you'll be able to move within, and confirming you have a solicitor lined up.

We did exactly what has been suggested. Our house was on at £350k and we offered full asking price same day we viewed, so did someone else. We went up to £360,250 and got the house. We paid a price we we willing to and got the house we wanted. We are planning on living here for 15+ years so just not worth worrying over whether we could have got it for a couple of k cheaper. We also wrote a short letter about us to go with it. The people we bought off had lived there for 30 years and raised their family there so thought it wouldn't hurt to say that we would love to raise our kids there too. Nothing too much but just honest. No idea if that mattered to them or not but in conjunction with a full asking price offer and then upping by 10k clearly gave the impression we were serious. I'm also a structural engineer so mentioned that so they knew that we were unlikely to be messing them around with too many surveys etc. Good luck and don't worry too much about whether you get the house for the lowest price possible, just only pay what it is worth to you.

Thanks everyone for your advice. We went up to £325k and added on a little note about how we were really keen and willing to do everything to their timescales.

STILL waiting to hear back on whether we've got it, the offer was put in yesterday at 3.30pm. I've just had a call from their finance team asking me about our mortgage in principle and she's said they're happy with that and we should hear back soon...driving me crazy!

We found our dream house last year and we offered the absolute maximum we could afford, even though it was waaay over "offers over x " ( Scotland, sealed bids). We really really wanted the house and we knew there will be a few high offers! We got it - the next offer was only £1500 less than ours! They must have been gutted to miss out!

Everything crossed!

Hope you get some good news!

Any news @mamamamysharona ?