Wondering if people think this is a weird idea and also looking for fellow frustrated property hunters!!!
So we're in the position of a lot of people at the moment... Trying to move to a nice area with good schools, hoping to move from a 'first house' that we bought pre children to a forever home.
On paper we've got the budget for a spacious 4 bed detached with decent garden in our chosen location, reasonable condition with the potential to make improvements and maybe extend in future. The plan is to be there forever, so we're happy to compromise on the interior as long as it's liveable for the first few years.
However with the market the moment, we're missing out on everything going immediately or going to best and final and someone going absolutely crazy with a enormous bid we can't compete with.
We've spent the last few years looking at things intermittently but we're being choosy because we don't want to move twice and then paused the search to have another baby etc. However, we're ramping up the search now because eldest child is 3.5. Doesn't start school until sept '23 but we want to be there in good time for applications etc.
Where we want to move is also same area that my parents and school friends live. At the moment we're marooned in a random location 1.5hrs from everyone and I want to benefit from the support and community we'll have as soon as possible. My husband works long hours and weekends so I'm on my own with children a lot. My mum comes up one day a week, she would love to more but it's a long journey with awful traffic. I have a few mum friends but it's not enough for proper support and most have 9-5 mon-fri working husbands!
We found the perfect house last week. It went on the market the week before and I knew straight away. I hassled the agent 4 times over 2 days for the earliest viewing because they were inundated. It was ideal and they went to best and final. We got a call saying it was between us and another. There were 20+ offers. They liked that I grew up on that street... but the other offer was higher. We went massively over asking and couldn't go another penny without risking mortgage refusal. They went with the higher offer.
Apparently the house was on the market after the previous sale fell through. I am of course hoping it falls through again, maybe the other party went silly high and they're finances won't work out...and I'd hope they'll come back to us! I made that clear to the agent but they're so busy the agent was like 'yeah, sure, bye!' I don't have any hope that the agent passed it on or that we'd get a call if it fell through.
I was thinking of a short letter/note through the door saying along the lines of; 'hope you don't mind the note, we bid 'x' on the house, weren't successful, we loved the house, if anything changes please feel free to contact us direct about our offer, contact details' ... I thought this was fairly inoffensive and makes them likely to contact us. Husband says it's a creepy thing to do....! Of course it could come to nothing but I heard 1/3 of sales are falling through at the moment.