Help me make an offer on dream home

[Elz58]

Our dream home came on the market last week, and we have a second viewing booked tomorrow.

We love it, it’s well within our budget but the estate agent have priced it competitively with a range (£675-725k) so there’s been a lot of interest.

They had 14 viewings over two days, several booked over the next week and these types of houses are rarely available so I don’t think it’ll stay on the market long. The agent was keen to get an offer out of us on Saturday, but I wasn’t prepared to do that without a second viewing (it’s still a buyers’ market here in the Midlands really).

We’re in a great position, under offer to first time buyers, we have a full mortgage offer (not just a decision in principle as we had a purchase fall through).

How should we play this with the estate agent? I’ve never offered on a house with lots of other interest before. I don’t want to get into a bidding war…

We can’t ’easily’ move into rented. We’d pay a £8k early repayment charge on our mortgage, and lose a 1.4% interest rate if we went chain free. That would push the property over budget and more debt than I’m comfortable with.

thank you everyone for all your help.

I would not have put that stipulation about chain free on my offer either with a house that has that much interest.

I always think it's interesting on this board seeing people expecting others to go into rented, but they themselves are not prepared to.

Yes I completely see your reasoning, especially financially but this may well apply to the vendors as well.

What will be, will be.

Does this mean that even if your offer is not accepted, you will have to place the same conditions if you offer on another house?

Have to agree with others, adding a chain free demand is going to significantly reduce your chances of getting this house. The truth is it's not just you, NO-ONE can easily move into rented. It's costly and troublesome, even if a person can find a rental that would accept short term tenants. TBH I wouldn't accept an offer with that condition even if it was the only offer I had.

Any news? Have everything crossed for you.

We increased to £725k (top of the guide price range), but said only if they go chain free, and accept within 48hrs.

The 48 hours is up OP, how did you get on?

I guess your offer wasn't accepted.

The trouble is, your buyers have already waited 9 weeks (probably more like 10 now) and you haven't even got to the beginning of the purchase process on a house you want to buy. This is obviously massively frustrating for them.

You think that insisting that the vendor goes into rented will help but in fact, all it does is ensure that they choose to sell to someone else because you are making the process more expensive and complicated for them from the get go.

Therefore, you lose this potential purchase and the knock on effect is that your buyers have to wait even longer or give up and look for another house to buy. I think you are approaching this from wrong angle even if well intentioned.

My advice would be to drop this idea of conditional offers and just be sensible and pragmatic. Chains are always stressful but someone saying they will go into rented doesn't mean they actually will so you have no guarantee of that anyway.