Buy now or wait?

[Star5555]

I am looking to buy a new house sometime this year as I nearly have enough saved for a deposit. I'm getting close to the 10% down mark and feel pretty confident about the mortgage process itself, but am worried about getting the timing right. We currently have the option to buy the house we are renting, and while we are very comfortable in this home we were hoping to move into the catchment for the secondary school we'd like our dc to attend. The problem is that the houses in this area are either a) too expensive or b) smaller than I'd like for our needs. Obviously know we need to sacrifice something but I can't decide what to give on.

The house we are renting was currently valued to be around £330K and is in our price range, but over the amount I feel comfortable borrowing as it will mean eating into the money I usually put into savings. I'd really like to avoid maxing out what we can afford in case interest rates go up or our circumstances change. To be honest, I don't feel comfortable offering more than £300K and ideally would prefer £275K but that price is no longer realistic it seems given prices in our area have shot up in the past few years. I still want to look at other houses too but we'd be in the exact same position of having to negotiate down. We are FTB so no chain, so at least have that going for us, but I'm really not sure how much it's reasonable to offer below the valued price.

I could of course wait and save up more, but it just feels like that leaves me open to the possibility of further increases in prices which will eat up any additional savings. I'm torn on what to do: should we wait to buy or try to get something now?

Thank you! I've spent a lot of time watching the market and reviewing my finances this past year. I'm okay with stretching a bit, but with having two children I also want to be responsible and not max out too much.

We have told the landlord essentially that and they are happy to keep renting to us. We've started looking at other houses on the market, which is really helping tremendously to get a sense of what we really want. We may revisit things with the LL if after looking more we feel the asking price is reasonable, but it's hard to assess as the latest sold prices for our area are a bit out of date. I have seen other things sell but they just haven't been posted yet so I don't know what the seller got in the end.

@Star5555 when I’m thinking about buying in an area I follow the local market for a few months and that way you do get to see what properties actually sell for compared to their asking prices. The more you follow properties online (& even view some of them) the more knowledgeable you will get, so it’s a good plan.