Offer a bit more or hold nerve?

[Katkincake]

Saw a house last Friday. Rung and offered asking after viewing. Told to hang fire until viewings were done over weekend. Rung back yesterday to see if any other offers, told no but some 2nd viewings arranged. Checked again at lunchtime, told some people are still pondering. Also found out an offer £30k below asking had been outright rejected, plus an asking offer rejected and not countered.

EA put our asking offer to Vendor on the condition that we asked for them to stop marketing it as we’re in a proceed-able position. Vendor says no, he wants to see what those still deciding offer or I could make a counter offer. I declined to counter as there isn’t a competitive buyers dash for it, it’s a about £15k overpriced for the area comps, plus the vendor hadn’t suggested any counter.

I’m now wondering whether to go back and offer £5k more just to see if I can satisfy the vendors obvious desire to get above asking. That way we’ve gone a bit higher than the other people who offered asking. Or should we just sit tight and play hardball like the vendor? (They may still say no to the extra £5k & want more the take it off market.)

For context, there aren’t many properties coming on in the area we’re looking in & we’ve lost out on bidding wars for others. We need to find somewhere soon (we sold in feb) or we’ll have to rent and give up our very favourable 1.6% mortgage rate (we can port it to new property) plus we’d have to pay £10k early redemption fee.

Ask the agent to go back to them and ask them how much they want to remove from the market and take it from there?

Hold on, otherwise you will be paying well over the odds, ok if you are cash buyer and the property will be a long term, but if you need a mortgage you may find it’s down valued at survey OP.

No no no. Hold fire now. They will come back to you if someone offers more. Don’t offer more now, he will push for even more. Hold still and shush

I’d offer 5k more which is very little in the scheme of it.

it is Uber annoying but given your backstory it’s worth it. I’d be inclined to put a deadline on it though so they don’t just use you as a barter…

I'd hold on.

I would hold fire for now as no one has offered more than you. If you increase your offer at this point you will only be bidding against yourself.
Im sure the estate agent will come back to you if someone makes a higher offer than you, since you have shown how keen you are already.

Do you want the house? I wouldn’t think twice about offering £5k more if it was the house for me. In the grand scheme of things, it won’t make much difference in terms of cost. We offered £60k over asking (end of 2021) and then raised our offer by a further £10k at best and final offers to buy our house. We plan to live here 20-30 years and the extra £10k added like £20 a month to our mortgage, which we reasoned was like 3 less midweek bottles of wine!

If the offer hasn't been rejected, don't increase it! Give the agent a deadline for a decision, it's not fair for you to wait around whilst other people have 2nd viewings when you've offered asking.

Thanks for advice all, esp’ @Summersolargirl on the shush 😂

Thankfully I got distracted by work, so by the time I thought about it again the agents have closed.

Will see what they come back with tomorrow. She did say if there’s a higher offer from someone else they’d come back to us. I’m just anxious to secure something after months of trying and bidding going way beyond our budget (also lost out twice to lower bid chain free buyers so renting might give us some advantage)!

Well there you go ... estate agent will come back to you if there’s a higher offer.
Maybe it was just as well you got distracted at work before you could increase your offer. Try to wait it out now until you hear from the estate agent. At least wait it out for a few more days!

@mindutopia yes £5k nothing in overall purchase price and how long we’ll be there, I guess it’s more the principle of offering more when no other buyers are bidding against us.

We do love it, but it offers less rooms (3 rather than 4 bed) & storage (the garage has been removed & just a base left behind) than other places, where their asking price was £30k lower to start. We can overlook the price difference for location, plot size and character but not go overboard in securing it, as we need to spend around £30k to put in a single garage and garden office instead of 4th bedroom.

Definitely hold fire, particularly if you think it is overpriced. They will let you know if they have a better offer but it doesn't sound as if this has happened. The sellers sound unrealistic if they are expecting offers over asking.

Just thought I’d update you.

The agents rung to say someone had offered the extra £5k to take it to £500k and did we want to counter? DH and I discussed and agreed it was getting too expensive compared to others, so we wouldn’t take it further.

Whether offering £500k yesterday would have secured it, I don’t know. But the other buyer could have countered again so we’d be back to where we are now anyway.

God I hate buying houses. I’m sorely tempted next time to offer more than we feel comfortable paying and plan on bartering down at survey stage, but it doesn’t feel right to do that and what if nothing flags up on survey?

Now someone else has offered 500k I would be tempted to offer 505k on the basis that this is your final offer and stick to that

God I hate buying houses. I’m sorely tempted next time to offer more than we feel comfortable paying and plan on bartering down at survey stage, but it doesn’t feel right to do that and what if nothing flags up on survey?

I feel like i've missed out by not doing this, annoying as I want it to be straightforward

I bet some people are doing this.
The other thing that is happening a lot is down valuations by the banks and bargaining after they come in lower than amount offered.

Yes & I'm sure some buyers will end up paying less as the sellers have met them half way etc.

It’s frustrating, but only ever what you are prepared to pay/afford our buyers wanted us to drop the price at survey, last year, we said no, they paid the agreed price. We would not have dropped as it was great house and we knew we would get another buyer straight away.

Mine's been downvalued by a considerable amount and I'm currently in negotiations with the vendors to see if they'll meet halfway. Their initial counter offer was too high (I had offered an initial 5% over the downvalued amount, which they turned down) and now waiting to hear if they'll go for the little bit extra I've offered. If they don't go for that, in the words of Duncan Bannatyne, ah'm oot.

Ours (that we were buying) was down-valued by £50k so don't offer more than £20k comparable properties!

I’m fully expecting our buyers to try this trick, but they also know that if they do we’ll pull out as we’re taking the risk going into a rental to enable the chain to complete. So hopefully they’ll see sense. They only need £150k mortgage compared to £550k house.

We have a healthy 50% LTV on most places we’re viewing, so it down valuing compared to agreed price isn’t too much of a problem other than not wanting to pay through the nose for something.

DH gets super nervous on affordability buying houses whereas I'm more “it’ll be OK”. Wish we’d gone with my suggestion of offering another £5k as we might have got it on Tuesday. Hey ho