Best and final - how high do people actually go?

[EasterChick98]

We're buying in an area which is meant to be a seller's market at the moment. Obviously some of this could be estate agents talking things up, but certainly the rightmove listings do seem to back this. All the decent properties seem to be under offer within a couple of weeks.

We've been told to expect to go to 'best and final' if we see a place we like. This is all new to us. On our last two properties we were the only bidder and we got both for slightly under asking price.

What I want to know is...how high do people actually go when placing best and final offers? Is there any ballpark of what's normal? 10k over? 50k? 100k?!

For context, this is in the SE and for properties around the 700-800k mark.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Best doesn’t always mean highest.

E.g. £525k asking price property, very desirable location. Vendor wants quick sale to move into retirement flat. Took £505k no chain, over £525k chain.

Best doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all over asking either.

@bakeoffrewatch that's interesting. I'd definitely equated best with highest. Is it typical though that someone wouldn't take the highest (or second highest) offer - surely that would be unusual? Or maybe not?!

I’m in Scotland and it’s normal here to go to a closing date with sealed bids, but I don’t know the market where you are...
Look at anything that ticks the boxes a nd looks like it’s ballpark to your budget.
Two strategies: Offer what it’s worth to you. So add up all the work you’d want to go to it, compare it to nearest similar property and put a £ on all differences... eg south facing with evening sun add £10k, mature garden add £10k, conservatory you’ll never use, add £0k. It’s not what it’s worth to someone else, it’s what you’ll value it as.
Or, work out what average for that type of property is and adjust it for obvious differences (garage, or whatever).
I typically try and do both figures and then go with whatever I’d feel happy having paid, I lost out on a house about 10 years ago- I offered £300k (ish) it sold for £400k. It was sold again about 8 months ago for £310k... so don’t be the mug who “has to win”.
Include in your offer everything that makes you a “good” and committed buyer, and when you view be enthusiastic and polite about everything. Sometimes people wont consider selling their much-loved home to someone they dislike.

If you are reliant on a mortgage, the valuation might not agree with the agreed price if you go too high.

Our last sale went to best and final offers within 7days of opening.
We had 12 offers - popular area but not many houses for sale.
We sold to the one that was 10% over asking, cash buyers no chain so in best position.
It wasn't the highest, the highest was 12% over but it didn't feel right, weird couple and gut feeling turned out right as they offered on our friends house after us and mucked them around and withdrew at the last minute.

@saz12 wow 100k over on a 300k house that's incredible

@wonkylegs sorry if this is a silly question but how did you get to know the buyers? All our viewings so far have been with agents, we've never met any vendors. Perhaps that is specific to my area.

All our viewers were pre checked for finances / sale position etc but I did all our viewings so probably not that helpful to you.
Mainly because I hated viewing with agents as they never knew the answers to any questions we had and didn't want it to be that way for anyone looking at ours. We only did viewings on 5days and I work from home so it wasn't too difficult.

We've "won" best and final twice - for one of those, I know we weren't the highest bidder - we didn't go over the asking price at all although we were less than 2% below - but we were in a really strong position (in rented, we'd been looking for a while and had forged a relationship with the agent so they knew we were serious / not time wasters, husband's firm would do conveyancing so no delays etc).

Second time we went over by about 5%.

Both times we've written a short, straightforward email to go with the offer setting out our position etc etc.

EasterChick - that was in 2007 when the market was crazy here, and it was an unusual house sold in spring during a spell of lovely weather, just when lots of others were struggling to find something to buy...

Your other alternative is to go in with a very good offer straight away in hopes of avoiding competition.

Its only worth what youre willing to pay for it.

Im in east london and the market is nuts. Houses selling within days. You get one 15 minute slot on saturdays and have to put your best and final in by the monday.

We refuse to get swept up in crazy offers.

The place we are seeing on Saturday is the very top of our budget and has 30 viewings booked in for the day and we know it will go for well over asking. Very frustrating.

@hyperion100 funnily enough we were in a similar position to you in East London a few years back (we've in a different area now). The market there does seem to go a bit crazy. We took your approach and in the end we didn't buy but I'm feeling the pressure a lot more this time as we have school terms to worry about for our DD and I'm hoping to minimise disruption for her.

@africa2go wow you've done well to 'win' twice! I've actually been looking at whether we should consider moving into rented as a back up plan, DH isn't keen at all though.

We went with the highest price we were willing to pay to get the house, so that if we didn't win it we wouldn't regret not putting a higher offer in. Basically what it is worth to us.

@fitzbilly how far over did you go, and did you get it?!

We paid £13k over on a £220k house (and sold for a profit a few years later).

We’d lost out on so so many houses by offering £5k / £10k over so in the end we went the max we could afford.

It meant there was no ‘oh what if we’d gone up to x’ as we literally couldn’t have done, so no regrets on missing out.

If you love the house, and plan on staying long term, that extra £5k or however much will be forgotten quickly if the house makes you happy.

We offered on a probate detached house that needs a lot of work for 5% over asking price so offer was £25k more than asking. There were 9 offers which went to best and final offer. We were cash buyer as well without chain.

Later, the survey throw up a few issues so we renegotiated the price to 2% above asking price. I think it worked out well as it was prices below normal conditioned properties in the area to begin with and we wanted a total refurb project.

We offered £26k over, and yes we got it!

We offered less on other houses we saw but we didn't love them so didn't want to offer more.

In the current climate it was the only way.

We offered £775k on a £750k asking price house and didn’t get it in a final bids scenario. We offered what it was worth to us and although we were disappointed not to get it at the time, we have since found our dream home so everything happens for a reason blah blah

Defo not unusual . I missed out so many times as an FTB in hot market. But tbh I was naive. It’s not a “compute” type scenario, the EAs chase up all viewings for feedback and offers, then they have their weekly meeting about what they’ll advise vendor - who is the person they work for, and they’re incentivised to ensure sales exchange as that’s when they’re payable. Offers from nervous naive FTBers who might wobble out at a survey, or offer too much that a mortgage lender would never loan out at on the property (not an issue with cash buyers, go as high as they want) are bottom of the pile! There’s no point the EA/vendor going with highest if it looks unlikely to get to exchange. Just see the sellers/buyers roll call thread for the heartbreak and how many months it can drag. 20k on a house you paid the mortgage off on decades ago prob isn’t worth it.

I heard someone say once what amount would you kick yourself for if you heard it went for that and you’d not offered it. Also if you’re tempted to offer say £305k go for £306k as so many people default to 5/10k increments.

Go for what you can afford you absolutely cannot guess what anyone else will offer or how proceedable they are. It’s simply impossible. Offer what it’s worth to you, don’t offer what you can’t afford, and if someone else offers more and is more proceedable then be prepared to walk away.

I accepted middle offer on my best and final. The bottom bid discounted, the middle bid (£40 over asking, which was £945k) had house under offer through same agents, top bid had yet to sell and I think tried to wow us by offering over £1m. I ignored the letters and just went with proceedability and price.

@changingwiththetimes do you mean they offered 945k and asking was 905k? Interesting that you went middle, although if the top one hadn't even gone under offer yet I guess that makes sense.

@fightingtalk out of interest do you know how much it went for in the end? That's exactly the sort of price point we might be looking at.

Just had a look on Zoopla and the sold price isn’t there yet - we only made the bid in December - but the estimate is £678k-£829k so hopefully we were lucky not to get it!

Two viewings for this house we bought in December and two asking price offers within 12 hours. We went 5k over which was about 2% and won. We also put in a note about why we loved the house which they said swayed them, but we’ll never know who bid more.

Also, I’d say it depends on how many horses are in the race. If they’d continued viewings on this house after having two asking price offers we would have pulled out as we wouldn’t have won in a massive bidding war. We’d been to see a few that had several asking price offers already and more viewings lined up and had estate agents calling asking if we wanted to throw our hat in the ring for houses that had loads of people doing best and final. I thought that attitude was really greedy and didn’t want a part in it.