If you overpaid for your property, do you regret it?

[Diffuser]

Head or heart?

I viewed a house last Friday which I loved.
I thought the vendor would be open to offers given that it's been on the market for 7 months and is currently vacant, but nope, he will not budge. As far as I'm aware he's only had 1 other offer a few months ago which was declined.

I feel it's overpriced, by around 15k. That's based on recent sold properties in the same area. I gave my best and final which was declined on Saturday but I keep thinking about it and I've actually felt quite upset over it the last couple of days. Silly I know.

I know I've made the right decision financially, but a part of me just wants to spend all my money to secure it. But would I be happy, knowing that I've overpaid? I think it would always be in the back of my mind.

If you overpaid for your property, was it worth every penny or did you end up regretting it?

£15,000 for a home you expect to be your medium or long term home isn’t much broken down per year and over the term of a mortgage it’s a few pounds a month. If you love the e property and haven’t seen anywhere else you like even half as much, I’d suck it up as the premium for love and go ahead. You can’t value everything in financial terms, that makes for a sad life.

No, we overpaid on the asking price by 8k. Once we were in there was loads that we hadn't realised needed doing like roof repairs, window replacement and boiler replacement - probably about 10k work.

We probably wouldn't have bought if we knew about the additions but. Glad we did as we love our house and it's definitely our long term in for forever home

15k if it’s term is nothing, the price you pay becomes it’s new value

We overpaid by about £5k, a decade on we’re up £150k on value. Delighted to have got the best house we realistically could have. Was a massive stretch but now the mortgage is manageable and life is pretty good. Nothing comparable came up in the year or two later when the biggest surge in values happened, which would have pushed us into something materially smaller.

No we don't regret overpaying.

We had already made an offer on a house nearby that wasn't as good as the one we really liked but it went back on the market the day after our offer was accepted.

We booked a viewing and offered the same amount we had made on the previous house which was 3.5K less than the asking price, offer rejected so we came back to the asking price which turned out to be 30K over the valuation.

It's the forever home with more options and history of extensions being accepted, more land, more outbuildings.

We are very happy with it.

What Is £15k as a percentage of the price? If it’s just a few percent and you love the property, intend to stay for at least 5 years and can afford the asking price then I would probably go for it.

We paid asking price at the top of the market, 3 years ago, and our buyers also paid our asking price. We were cash buyers though, so overall the only real difference was a couple of thousand in stamp duty.

I can live with that. When we sell at some point in the future, we will again be selling and buying in the same market.

Overpaid by £100k. 10%. I know, because the house was down valued that much in our survey. Had to use equity from the previous sale and take a much higher LTV than planned because the vendor was not open to any negotiation.

Honestly, if I’d known then how happy this house and garden would make me, I would have paid double 😁. We actually got a great fixed rate and it costs an extra £200 per month on the mortgage so as far as I’m concerned that is the bargain of my life.

If you love it, do it. Buying a home is not just about money.

We're currently going through the same dilemma, we ended up offering over the odds. Just had a level 3 survey and there's alot of work that needs to be done asap and our lender downvalued by £10k from what we offered. Thinking we really need to renegotiate but also don't want to miss out. This house is a huge stretch for us but we'll be in it for 20 years at least. Sooooo difficult. 😩

We ended up paying over due to the house ending up in a bidding war (probably due to premium street in the town). Originally offered £10k under asking, ended up paying £5k over to secure it. Then 3 months later the Truss chaos happened, the bank withdrew our 2% AiP and ended up with a different bank for 5% adding hundreds to the mortgage payment (house was over half a million). We still hung on as we loved the location and the house had lots to offer us in terms of a fairly unique reqirements.

We’ve now been in 2.5 years and really don’t regret it. We probably couldn’t sell it for what we bought it for today, though it wouldn’t be much under but ultimately, don’t want to sell it! Part of the appeal of the house was that it had the potential to be a very long term home for us- at the time of offering we thought 7-10 years but actually now we’re in, we have the best location in a town we love, we would only move to a bigger house on the same street or the next one and there are so few houses in that category, it may never happen!

Actually we’ve ended up spending more on the house due to realising how much we love it, we’ve made some fairly significant changes that we wouldn’t have bothered with if our plan was to sell on- we’ve swapped a bedroom for a bathroom for example and the old bathroom is only big enough for a box room. Wouldn’t have done this if considering resale but actually we really wanted that layout for our lifestyle! If we’re still here and feeling the same way about the place in 5 years we’re going to do a big rework of the downstairs to make the space work better.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still here at retirement (currently 30s)- the house simply ticks so many boxes that the overpayment was worth it for us. We are hoping to get a better interest rate when it’s time to remortgage though!!!

Don’t let your heart rule your head. Property prices have stalled, but the sellers don’t seem to have moved with the current market. My neighbour put their house up for sale last September for 499,950, it needs bringing up to date and just not worth it. They have now reluctantly reduced it to 439,950 and it’s still up for sale. The estate agents themselves aren’t helping with their valuations, they put that higher figure in the vendors head which then makes is very difficult for them to see beyond this 🤷‍♀️

Probably overpaid by £25k (the valuation certainly thought so), but on million pound house. There is a fair amount of stuff to do to it, but planning on being in it for at least 20 years so I can cope with that. We hadn’t seen many others cheaper over the previous 3 years.

We went 20k over asking in sealed bids.

No regrets its our dream home and we decided it was worth the extra cash when we put the offer in.

No. We paid over the odds by at least 20-30K when we bought it 8ish years ago and they made a big profit from what they paid 3 years earlier. However, they'd done a good bit of genuine work and there was very little about at the time in the area we needed to be in. We made an offer on one (as cash buyers) where the vendor started farting about and withdrew immediately, then found this which was not "officially" on the market, the agent they'd tentatively contacted "matched" us. They had a figure in mind that was a bit high but we wanted it, so we paid.

It has been absolutely the right house for us so no regrets.

We definitely overpaid by £5,000-10,000 on a £250,000 house in 20909. I felt sick about it at the time. But it'd probably be valued close to £450k now, so overtime it didn't really make a difference

I think there's a big difference between a sealed bid situation where you overpay as there are lots of interested parties which we did just to get the house and a house that no-one in 7 months has been interested enough in to put an offer in that is attractive to the seller.

Why not go back for another viewing and see if you still feel the same about it?

I would question the vendor’s motivation to sell if they won’t budge even slightly. If they are that tricky now, I doubt they’d make the process smooth down the line.

We overpaid, though it's hard to judge by how much as the house isn't too similar to other houses on our street. But we don't regret it. We had a date by which we wanted to move (for school), and we were bursting in our old flat, and the location and size has suited us perfectly. We plan to stay here for at least a couple of decades and financially we're confident that the amount we overpaid will be a small blip over the years. And no other property has come up that would have been better for us in terms of size, layout, location and finish.

We probably overpaid slightly for our house but there was a closing date and sealed bids so difficult to estimate. Over the years the house has increased in value and it no longer seems important. The house has been great for us and looking back I'm glad we moved here rather than the other houses we had looked at.

Going to depend a bit on why you're buying - and also on your LTV. If it's a long term home, the chances are the "overpayment" will disappear into insignificance over time. For many people the joy of getting a "good deal" on a house will be much shorter lived than the joy of living in a lovely house. Is it worth missing out on a house you really want for the sake of refusing to pay a little more.

However, if you are stretching and at risk of ending up in negative equity if prices drop a bit, or the extra payment will mean a higher interest rate and all these things that might make life in that house hard, it's not worth it.

That said, I would definitely step away at this stage. The vendor might be assuming you'll keep coming back with higher offers and will reconsider once you walk away.

I wouldn't overpay in this market. What if your circumstances change and you need to sell sooner than you thought?

The market can change, of course, but the liklihood is that property will always increase over time. So 'overpaying' becomes a non-issue.

But for me, if a house has been sitting on the market for months and the vendor isn't entertaining offers, that would be a red flag.

He's clearly not a motivated seller and I can almost guarantee you'll have issues, or he'll pull out, mess you around.

Keep looking!

Forever home, and you can afford the overpay I'd not be bothered, 5 year house or less not a chance.

Overpaid (according to the mortgage survey) by £15k on a £400k cottage 6 years ago. I felt very uneasy about it at the time but I'm now glad we secured the property because it was exactly what we wanted when there was nothing else on the market at the time.

Something is only worth what someone is prepared to pay. If you are prepared to pay the asking price then it's worth it to you.

Some really good advice here. I agree with PP’s if it’s going to be a long term move, buy the house you love, if short term do not over pay.