Sinking feeling of losing out on an ideal property

[JivingSince1982]

I have a feeling this is going to be us this week. We’ve found a slight do-er upper (ideal location), offered under asking price and firmly decided on what our absolute limit needs to be given we would want to get to work on changing some parts immediately.

It’s on for £550k (we feel it’s overpriced for the area and current state of the house). We’ve offered £531k and could only go up to £533k without eating into £14k we would have set aside to start doing it up.

EA logged our offer yesterday however did say there’s higher offers than ours on it at the moment. We met the sellers briefly at the viewing, they seemed nice and said they’ve raised their family in it – we explained we’re looking to upsize now we’ve begun our own family. I’m being silly and emotional but it’s hard not to want to throw an extra £5k at it and accept works would take longer. We plan to stay in our onward purchase for many years, and add to our family. We would be in a chain but have a sale agreed on our place.

We can save about £1k a month, so if it took 12+ weeks to complete we’d have at least another £3k but I just need to stop trying to calculate “what ifs” now and leave it to the Gods! Maybe we'll be put out of our waiting misery soon with news that someone's offered the asking price and we can move on from it.

Offloading over! Time for a brew

It's 1% of the value. I would go for it as long as the current state will allow you to live in it. However, keep in mind renovation costs are soaring at the moment. Some building materials are going up monthly!

If it’s really the ideal property, then 5k isn’t a lot… do you believe the other offers are higher AND the people proceedable?

Re work: material costs might be going up but I think you have more bargaining power than before as fewer people are having work done

What does the house need doing & what do you want to do?

PS - I tend to think people just go for the highest proceedable offer when buying /selling, being a nice family wouldn’t come into it

I paid: 7k under asking for my first place, 10 under asking for 2nd

So I sympathise, we lost out on two similar do-er uppers. I had mentally planned what we would do and moved in in my head ! Both went for more (when you factored in renovations) than the the most expensive on the street. Of course you get to design what you want which is amazing but then there is the time and hassle of living in a building sight.

We also renovated our first house - largely ourselves - bar the bathroom and electrics. This was pre kids.

I can honestly say I am so glad we didn't get either of these houses. Both would have been money pits and I can't imagine where we would have found the time. We can also see how we were blinded by the good sides of the house (one had a great view, one was a lovely arts and crafts) and missed out assessing practicalities.

We now live in a very modern house, with an extension project planned and in an amazing location.

I did exactly what you did onlynut was sealed bids. I missed out by £2k. I was completely gutted. I bought a house close by but tgat house was perfect and in a better part of town:( I ended up paying £30k more too about 3m later.

Have you accepted an offer on your own property OP under the asking price because it's a "nice" family / couple ....no.....because you needed the maximum offer on the table to find your onward purchase....

If you really want it I think you should at least pay asking price and live with doing the renovations at a slower pace. It depends on the area but nothing decent is going for under asking near me. You could be lucky if the other offers fall away but it sounds unlikely. Are the estate agents trying to negotiate with you? If not sounds like they’re pursuing someone else. If you love the house you need to get yourself back at the top of the list.

Doer uppers are very popular if in a desirable location. Because it gives people a chance to make a house they want in the right location. Based on the very little information you gave, you’d be against stiff competition. On a separate note, £14k won’t go very far if this really is a doer upper. In fact it won’t even touch the sides, materials alone to renovate a 2/3 bedroom house will cost more.

Experience In losing out on a house you really wanted usually teaches you to just bid the asking price the next time. To save the repeated heartache and uncertainty. Even if bidding the asking price cripples you.

Good luck, You never know, maybe you’ll clinch it! I hope you’re not up against anyone whose bidding with that experience!

Unless the renovations are absolutely essential immediately, bid more now and delay the improvements. No vendor is going to accept a lesser offer because you're a nice family and you will miss out.

I had to pay the full asking price for this place (£525k). I tried to offer £5k less but they insisted. Thank God I didn't mess around because property prices then rocketed, plus this place is perfect for me

I would be mindful of escalating values and whether the £5k can really be better used than securing the house you really want.

Just want to counterbalance- “nice family “ doesn’t count but knowing someone is desperately keen to complete does count. And sometimes appearing “nice” feeds into that as you can spin what a genuine, interested buyer you are.

My mum sold a doer upper, she had four “proceedable” buyers pull out on her, they were all vouched for by their brokers as financially sound. In the end she accepted an offer from a woman who flipped the property.

Remember estate agents lie and lie, they lie even when it isn’t necessary to lie. It’s basically 30% truth, 70% bs. Don’t trust anything the agent says, be extremely skeptical. Sure other people may offer more but also they may not, DO NOT play the game the estate agent wants. Offer what you want to offer, be content to let fate decide the rest.

Re work: material costs might be going up but I think you have more bargaining power than before as fewer people are having work done

That's interesting @BeanStew22. May I ask how you know this and what you think the reason is for it? Demand and waiting times were crazy last year!

We've just had an offer accepted on a doer upper in a similar price bracket. We offered 1% over asking and emphasised our chain-free status (we're in rented). We also emphasised wanting a family home and working locally/school locally.

Depending on what your improvements are can you delay to spend more on the purchase now. £14k won't go far. We spent £40k 12 years ago on our previous house just to get it livable in, then saved up for the rest. It cost us about £100k in total over eight years. We're anticipating spending at least that again this time.

We offered 1% over asking and emphasised our chain-free status (we're in rented). We also emphasised wanting a family home and working locally/school locally.

Money and proceedabilty is all vendors care about. I had so many letters pushed through my door when I was selling- done with extremely personal details (medical diagnoses etc). The only info that sway me in a letter is something emphasising your proceedabilty

*some

I wouldn't totally agree with that @GreenLunchBox. Amount and proceedability were our biggest factors when selling but I know several elderly people selling much loved family homes who really didn't want to sell to a developer. Or who didn't want to leave their neighbours living next to an HMO. And some less savoury views about not selling to people from out of the area.

So, we emphasised chain-free and over asking price but also put in a couple of sentences about family home and working locally (we didn't mention relocating from the south last year ).

OP do you know the seller's position - it's always worth finding out whether they have an onward purchase already sorted and then making your timeframe sound like it matches theirs.

It's not worth losing a house over 5k. That said you could offer more and still not get it as the market is crazy right now.

2 of our good friends have had their building projects revalued due to the rise in price of labour and materials... both by nearly 50% on builds originally costing over 200k when priced 18 months ago. Both have had to cancel.
Unfortunately it now seems they can't afford to move or improve
I wonder how many people are now in this situation

It depends too how often a house that would suit comes on the market at a price you can afford. We offered for 3 and missed out before we were successful, and probably paid over the odds (best & final / closing date) but I don't care if we did because this was summer last year and there has not been a single other property coming on the market since that we would have wanted, even if we had £100k more.

When we sold our last house we had 21 offers. We didn't take the highest, but we took the highest proceedable on our schedule. Lots of lovely people viewed it, but we wouldn't have been able to guarantee selling to someone we liked even if that had been a priority, as it's not speed dating and tbh we weren't really sure which viewer had made which offer.

Hi Everyone, an update to say the house we liked was marked as SOLD STC today - we didn't even get a call or email from the estate agent to say our offer was rejected. Of course it was a long shot anyways.

Thanks for all the stories of your experiences. We're considering proceeding with the sale of our place and if we haven't found anywhere by the crunch date then moving back in with my parents. It would be tight, and not ideal when we're used to our own space with our little one, but trying to place us as more proceedable to future sellers (i.e. not in a chain) and give us an opportunity to save what we'd usually spend on our mortgage payments each month...I dunno...will see how the next few weeks pan out... Thanks again Everyone.