Found our dream home! Help

[Labmum321]

Our house has been on the market for 9 weeks. We put it on for £10k more than we actually want for it in the hopes that someone knocks us down to what we want. It’s had 5 viewers but no offers. Feedback has been really positive. We’ve been in no rush to sell because the market is slow and so next to no houses have come on the market that have been right for us just yet. We even said if there’s no offers by the end of November we will just take it down as it’s becoming a pain now. We said at the start if the right house came along we would reduce ours for a quick sale.

Fast forward to now. The PERFECT house came along yesterday. We viewed last night. It ticks every box we had and the asking price is the top end of our budget, in the perfect location for us as it’s on the estate most of my family live. Its had 3 viewings so far and its only been on the market 1 day so I know its bound to get snapped up.

Ideally, we’d offer full asking price and would love the vendors to accept this offer, take it off the market and give us x amount of weeks to sell. At the viewing, they told us they were in a similar boat to us, they saw a house that had just come on the market, they viewed it and loved it, they put their house on the market that same day, their offer was accepted before their house was on the market and now they just need a buyer and said they don’t think it’s be on for long.

Realistically, one of the other viewers could be proceedable and it’s taken off the market this morning so we don’t want to reduce ours asap if that house is gone!

The viewings were all last night after the office closed so we won’t know what’s happening until this morning.

What would you do? I know if it was me I’d just go with whoever is the most proceedable and I wouldn’t blame them for doing that.

Should I ring up and offer full asking price straight away and tell them how serious we are and how much we love it etc? Or would it be pointless? Or not jump the gun with figures yet because these other viewers may not be proceedable either?

Make the full price offer on the house you love, what's the worst they can do? Say no, say it's already sold, say come back when you have a buyer? Just do it.

Reduce the price on your house to something attractive £195k to be under other ones locally and under the magic £200k and then fingers crossed it all comes together, you might even get higher offers if it then looks good value.

I think right move goes up in bands
so 300
325
350

if you put it at 200 I think you will get the same people looking
at 295 - 299 you will get more people who are looking at under 200 so more people
and the people who looked at 210 may come back and offer

I don't think that everyone quite understands that certain areas move a lot slower in terms of selling houses- as in, really really slow. I'm in a rural town and houses can sit on the market for ages, not because they're too expensive but because there aren't any buyers at all within certain price brackets. In some places, you're not so much looking for the market as for individuals.
There's a lot of talk on this board about having 10+ viewings in the first week, and I'm just pointing out that the market just isn't like that everywhere.

I'd offer full whack on the house you love (in fact, perhaps slight over, to mitigate the fact that you're not under offer yet), and make a big deal about how much you love the house- now isn't a time to play games and you want the sellers to know how motivated you are. If the sellers seem amenable to this I would then rapidly re-price your house to sell, and let your estate agent know that you are now very motivated to sell- there seems to be an awful lot of people out there 'just testing the market', and you want to distinguish yourselves from them. Ideally re-price the house so that it goes into the next bracket down on Rightmove, so that you can attract new buyers. Depending on what other offers the sellers of the dream house have this might just swing it for you.

The two that are currently SSTC, we know the vendors of one that listed at £220k and are under offer at £215k but I’m unsure on the other, they could well be under £200k

I think the £199,950 suggestion is a good shout. Waiting on a call back from our EA to request the reduction now.

You can’t seriously offer (or move) until you get a firm offer on your house. I’m also confused by you worrying about stringing your non existent buyer along for months….

Price it realistically, critically review the interior to make it as appealing as possible, then secure a buyer.

House buying is a process comprising huge periods of frustratingly slow progress punctuated with extreme flurries of activity. You need to get some urgency into your marketing if you want this (or any other) onward purchase.

You could ask the EA to contact all the people who viewed to let them know the price has reduced. Might get some more interest from them.

If your opening post you said you are prepared to take the house off the market by the end of November.

So why not drop the price for the next three weeks, just to see if you can get an offer in time for this property.? If still no offers, take it off the market and put back on in Feb/March at your original price.

Oh I am praying! If it’s meant to be, it will be! If it’s not, lesson learnt. No viewing until the we’ve sold. Though this is the first one in 9 weeks that I’ve been excited about, the rest always had something missing! And I’ve been scrolling on rightmove more than social media these days! We’re not even in a rush to move but I’ve got the bug now and have next years stamp duty increases in the back of my mind.

If it's not selling at £210K, then the bare minimum reduction is 10K off to a hopefully more realistic price of £200K - effectively 199K to appear in the lower band searches.

However you want to sell quickly, to have a chance of your dream home, so you need to drop below the realistic price to an incentivised too-good-to-miss price. £190K? £185K? £175K?

It all depends how overpriced you are in the first place and if there's anything wrong with the house/location.

Do you have any other way of raising the shortfall between what you house will sell for and what your dream home will cost?

I'm not sure you can officially offer unless you are under order yourself anyway can you? Why on earth would any seller accept it, they're gonna dump you for a better buyer as soon as one comes along anyway.

Meh, I had an offer accepted on the house before we were even on the market. It was a good offer and they wanted to sell to a local Family.

Go for it OP, folks on this thread are being very negative.

Get yours slashed to 195k and tell the vendor that's what you're doing.

I was in a similar situation recently. We had our house on the market for a while without much interest, but when the perfect home came up, I felt compelled to act fast. I offered full asking price right away, explaining how serious we were and our situation. The sellers appreciated the offer and we managed to secure the house. I’d say, don’t hesitate – if it’s the right home, showing your eagerness could work in your favor. However, make sure you're in a strong position to move forward quickly, just in case.

How much do you need to sell your house for to afford this new house?
Your pricing structure seems odd to date. You priced at £210k expecting to accept offers below that but, in doing so, cut yourself off from anyone searching in the up to £199,999 bracket even though some of them might have been your purchaser.
Why are you dropping to £199,950? Is it because you hope to get interest from the buyers in that bracket? Because you think it reflects the price it should have been set at at the time? Or are you pricing to sell? If you are pricing to sell, how low can you go?
Don't listen to feedback from those who have viewed. If they didn't put an offer in, their opinion is irrelevant, I have said all sorts of nonsense to vendors when we were looking, particularly if the owner had showed us around and was clearly proud of something they had done but which didn't appeal to us.

It took my son 3 months to realise some buyers were asking for more than they expected. Yes, he knew they were overpriced because he knew the market, but he wouldn't view when they had just been listed because he thought at such an early point they wouldn't accept offers.

After 3 months he realised he was best just ignoring everything and viewing anything he liked and thought was in his budget then make an offer and see where it landed as that was all.that was in his control.

So I think overpricing at first is a mistake as you may lose interested parties. If you are realistically priced and someone offers below - just decline it.

So house is now reduced to £199,950. EA advised to start at £205k but pushed for lower. It’s the lowest we will accept, any lower and we go off what’s been budgeted for and I’m very careful with our finances and what we can realistically afford and live our life too so I don’t want to go outside of that. Vendors estate agents now know we want to offer but need to sell first so said they’ll pass that information to the vendors and get back to us.

We have £82k left to pay on our current mortgage and our max budget for a property is £320k.

If this house doesn’t work out we’re just going to take the house down, overpay on our current mortgage and come back on the market when our fixed rate is coming to an end in 4 years time.

So vendors EA called back, they already have 2 proceedable offers now close to asking price. We told them we would be happy to pay full asking price. Other viewers made aware and would match. Now we all have to put in final offers via email.

Very unlikely to be us as I don’t want to over pay. The house next door sold for £310K in April 2024, it was identical to this one and similar decor. Our max budget was £320k really and that’s what it is advertised as. I suggested £321k and DH said we should offer £325k, but DH would offer £400k if we could afford it because he has his heart and soul set on securing this. I’m trying to think with my head. What would you do? We could afford a little bit more but it’s a slippery slope to keep upping the budget. Argh! Has anyone been in these shoes before for the final 3 offers? What happened? What would you do?

DH said oh if the other 2 are proceed-able that rules us out and EA said not really, they really liked you both and said you were in very similar situation to them and they see them in us, we’ve both have just had babies, we both want something bigger, both didn’t want to sell house before knowing they had something lined up etc. so they want to consider us with the others.

I worry theyll just be using you to up the others if you arent proceedable?

I'd go 325 and if not accepted just withdraw.

They'd be mad to accept though if they have two other offers who are proceed-able.

Exactly what I predicted… the EA has used your offer just to push proceedable people to bid higher.

The EA is talking shit… the sellers will accept someone who is proceedable.

Possibly. I don’t think they’ll go with us as we’re not being proceed-able so if they are using us to up the other offers I don’t mind, they were a really lovely couple and I hope they get a great offer even if it isn’t from us.

Realistically, 5k over the life of a mortgage is nothing to secure your dream house.

I echo other posters though that I find it hard to believe the sellers would accept your offer over other proceedable offers, especially considering they are selling to get their dream house and obviously don't want to jeopardise that.

Exactly my thoughts. I know I wouldn’t. I’d just go with whoever was the quickest and seemed the most genuine / less likely to mess me about.

I think we’ll just offer the asking price in that case.