How did you secure your dream house?

[Grainedesesame]

Hello everyone,
Thanks for your time. So we felt in love with our dream home in London yesterday. We were lucky/unlucky to be the first to view the property.
I am sure that this house will raise a lot of interest and I am not sure what is the best "strategy" to do our best and get our offer approved.
We are chain free and have mortgage approved. We have all the paperwork together and can go above asking price.
We are thinking of making a first offer at asking price and then move from there?
How did you secure your dream house in a competitive market?
Thank you,

Be careful not to get into bidding war, but if you move quickly it might help. Plus being chain free. Don’t scrimp on the survey though - we found knotweed in the garden and got a couple of thousand off (not full cost but contributed)

We live in a competitive housing market area, we where also luckly to be first to view the house we really wanted.

We had a very short chain only us selling to first time buyers. Don't mess the owners about it's definitely good to go in at the asking price.

We actually secured on this price and when we sold ours we had quite a few offers. We could have taken a higher one but they didn't have proff off a morgage offer. So we we're willing to go with the slightly lower bid because they had all there paper work already. So you've done the right thing, the highest bid doesnt always win.

Don't try to get a good price. If you will be there 10+ years it really doesn't matter whether you pay £20k more. Pay what you can afford, and don't be driven by what they house is worth necessarily. If it's your dream house, and you'll be sick if someone gets it over you by paying money for it you would have happily done if you'd known, don't bother with low offers. Just go for it.

Good advice above. I'd also suggest dealing with EAs in person. Go in, get to know them a little. Give them a reason to give a shit about you.
It's worked for us.
I've even been in with small DC as that seemed to charm them a bit, too.
However all it's really doing is demonstrating that you really care and you're very serious/determined.
There are plenty of flaky buyers out there and good agents will try to help their vendor choose a solid one.

I sold our house, v popular area, to the couple who;
Had a small complete chain
Had finances in order
Had a small child due to start at the school round the corner

For me, someone really commited to the purchase was more important. They offered asking price. I said for 5k more they could have it. We possibly could have got an extra 10k but I took the view that moving swiftly was important.

Don't go in too high....in case mortgage company don't agree with the valuation. However if you have mortgage in principle, and are chain free and offer asking price...if they agree to take it off the market and stop showing it to other vendors. Then that's an easy sale for them. Unless they are greedy they should be happy.

Thanks for all those great advise. As a thumb of rule, is it better to make a first offer at asking price or above to get in?

It really depends on the interest in the property, how it has been priced and/or how much you want it!