Another best and final offers question

[Househ]

The house we are interested in has gone to best and final offers (to our dismay). On market for 400K and had a couple of offers over asking price including ours, before going to best and final. Anyone had experience of this? What would you bid?

Any advice welcome :)

£440

@Househ

It would depend how much I loved it.

if I really loved it & really really wanted it, I would put the max I would be happy & able to pay and not regret having put in a higher bid if I didn't get it.

Good luck!!

You need to offer what you (a) can afford and (b) what you think it’s actually worth.

What was your previous offer that wasn’t accepted? This is key!

I would bid 40k which is 10 percent above,

407k was the highest so far

I've been wanting to talk about how 'best and final' etc is affecting us and our potential to get a mortgage. By us, I mean all of us who are on or who are trying to get on the property ladder.

If we are having to end up in bidding wars more and more - someone else went £40k over asking recently - mortgage lenders aren't all going to accept this if the house isn't actually worth that amount. Surely?

Which also probably means only those with very large pockets will be able to proceed with these overinflated prices?

I'd love to be wrong. But it really feels like some sort of sick game.

If there’s only 2 of you, I’d be tempted to do £417750.

are you in a chain? What’s the max you can afford. Never do a round number!

Our house went to best and final recently for around that price mark. Went £50k over asking (with three other offers coming very close to that and one offer actually slightly higher, but they had less cash in the bank for their deposit).

The banks have since approved the mortgage.

What helped us pick the buyers we did is they wrote a lovely offer letter alongside their offer.

@LittlestBaoBun but houses are worth what the market says they are. You need to be bidding on cheaper houses than you think you should be, surely?

10% over. If you really want it. If it gets down-valued after you’ve got it have that discussion with the vendor.

depends where you liver. We listed our house at £450k in March in York. Had 5 full asking offers by first weekend and went to best and final by the Wednesday. Offers were £475k, £470k, £467k, £462k & £460k. We picked £467k and we liked them the most and they were just about to exchanged on their house sale.

@LittlestBaoBun it's a pain in the arse particularly as I'm sure some higher offers will be renegotiated downwards afterwards. I'm not sure if I should be playing the same game.

I missed out on a lovely house. It was on for offers over 600k & we went to 650k which factored in our deposit & mortgage if it was down valued. But we lost out, the house has no central heating so I knew I couldn't go over that.

Another house I liked came back on because the chain collapsed. It was under budget but completely affordable but the seller would only take cash buyers.

I don’t understand these questions, offer what you think it’s worth and what you can afford.

We sold our house last year. It went to best and final offer. We didn't actually take the highest offer. We went for someone who was in a good position, willing for us to find somewhere else and who the estate agents liked. We'd had an open day and we could tell some of the purchasers were going to be hard work to deal with. I wouldn't offer more than you think its worth to be honest. We finally found somewhere and I feel we paid 20k over the asking price. Which we could have spent on the property we bought. Again we weren't the highest offer. The sellers was wanted it to go to a family. Fingers crossed for you op..

My mil’s house was up at £280, it went to best and final, there were four bidders. It sold for £330 to a first time buyer (who then tried to negotiate the price down and got told a firn NO by the estate agent).

Be sure that you can afford the price that you offer even if the mortgage company doesn’t agree with the valuation. In my Mil’s case, the estate agent told the winning bidder that the house that the house would be offered to the next bidder when they tried to reduce the offer later.

We had an offer of 630 accepted on a house that was on for 600. Still a bit worried we overpaid tbh!

I don't know. Admittedly I've no idea how a valuer evaluates the worth of a property. To me, if people are willing to pay higher then that should mean it's worth more. But I wasn't sure, from things I've read, whether that's taken into consideration or whether just the house itself is evaluated on size, condition, location etc.

There has been lots of threads about people who get stuck after the mortgage company down values the property. If you’re going to bid over market value you need to be prepared for the fact that you’ll have to soak up the excess, not the mortgage Co pant (unless you were only going to borrow a smaller sum initially and can increase the LTV).

We bid on a house for £255k. It’s a doer upper and once done, it will be worth a fair bit more. That’s not why we wanted it so badly - it’s a corner plot so has space to build an annexe for DM.

We went to best and final with three of us bidding. We won with a bid of £267500 by a very narrow margin. But the seller said they would have picked us even if we were a bit lower because our personal circumstances are similar to theirs and they understood our predicament (disabled DM and also disabled DC). So your story can sometimes be as important as your bid. I was really enthusiastic about the house and didn’t attempt to hide it.

*company - not co pant. I swear my phone hates me sometimes 😂🤦🏻‍♀️