Best and final offer help

[Ladyof]

We have finally seen a house we love, turns out so do many others, argh!

It is going to best and final offers.

Any tips on this, it feels odd it is right near the top of our budget so we sadly don't have loads of wriggle room.

Any tips to help us have a chance?

Just offer what you can afford. Be sure you emphasise that you have your finances in order (presuming you do and are ready to proceed).
I sold a house to best and final and it was a combination of offer and proceedability - I did not accept the highest offer as they still had to sell their house; the offer i did accept had their house under offer through the same agent, so double incentive for the agents to make sure both completed smoothly.

Is there a guide offer? How much are similar houses going for, I’d put in as close to the highest offer that you can afford. Say it’s 500,000. I’d put £501,299.

We went through similar, but were told we had to be cash or first time buyers. The sale fell through as loads of things like Japanese knotweed, structural issues and damp came up on the survey. We were asked if we wanted to bid again but it was just too stressful! Good luck

@suzi it's an estate where not many houses come up. The most recent sale was 2017 and smaller so it is hard to work out to be honest.

Where I am houses are selling for 10 to 15k over the asking prices and that’s 250k To 300k houses... definately a sellers market

Can you proceed? Do you know who the other interested parties are? Ours were builders so we knew they were prepared to go in with cash offers. The EA advised us not to go too high. We went £5k over, but we were not ready to proceed.

Also you have to bear in mind if you are getting a mortgage, the bank will have to value it to satisfy themselves it’s worth it for them so depends on how much deposit you have, the lower the amount of deposit the less wriggle room the bank will allow.

Go to what you're comfortable spending and put in your background (keen family, place to grow up etc). We won our place not with the highest bid but with the back story

We've gone to sealed bids and "won" both times (and I know for a fact we weren't the highest bidders on at least one of them). Just made the offer, but also set out our circumstances - in rented, no chain, mortgage sorted, H was a solicitor so his firm would deal with conveyancing and wouldn't be any delays, could work to their timescales, for one which was a probate we said they didn't need to clear the house if they didn't want to, wanted it as a family house etc...

Wasn't overly long or a sob story, just direct, to the point. Its just a question of setting out why you're a better bet than other purchasers (you can move quickly and won't mess them around). Obviously no guarantee that sellers are not just motivated by money and will go with the highest bid whatever, but might make a difference.

We have just lost out on a lovely house even though ours was the highest bid (15k over asking ). I think that, particularly at the moment, being able to complete by the SDLT deadline would be a major plus if you can manage it? The vendors of the house we wanted were more interested in proceedability than price, it seems (we are proceedable and in a good position but I guess someone else was even better!)

@Ladyof Did you put a bid in? When will you hear? Best of luck

We didnt get it sadly. Someone offered 25k more and they accepted that. Thanks for asking. Fingers crossed something better comes up soon.

I’m sorry you didn’t get this house.

Fingers crossed for you. I think it’s worth a background, it was for us. We also were flexible on when we move whilst some others are insisting on 30 June. (We were willing to do either but the top of the very small chain don’t want to move till their children finish the school year).