Edinburgh property market - reassurance needed!

[WineandDine]

Hi and firstly a huge thanks to all who have helped me out previously with your worldly knowledge of Edinburgh and best areas for a young family.

Been learning about the offers over system the hard way over the last few months having come second on several properties on closing day
The Edinburgh property markets seems a tad crazy to say the least but we are trying to remain positive and hopefully we'll get there in the end!

Anyway, we're planning to submit a bid for a property that closes later this week and I'm just after a bit of reassurance that we're not completely mental offering a significant chunk over the mortgage valuation to hopefully secure the sale. I won't go into detail but it's a very popular family area, good schools and we'd be looking at going around 10-12% over MV.
Is this normal for Edinburgh? Having only been house hunting for a few months were unsure if the market is currently in a bubble or is there always this level of demand?

Thanks as always and sorry if above is a bit vague and naive. New to all this!

If you can afford it then yes it's something you might need to consider, particularly in very popular areas.

If you search on Rightmove/zoopla you can find out what houses sold for in your area and then if you google their address you can often pick up the original price that was set when it first went on the market. This would hopefully give you a guide as to what percentage people added on.

Good luck

Best bit of advice I was once given (and dh was also told, long before I met me) was that a house is worth what you want to pay for it. Sounds obvious but only you can judge that.

In terms of the "Offers Over" system, I don't know the current state of the Edinburgh market, but I can advise that whatever you do decide, add some "odd" numbers to it. So if say, you want to offer £450k, offer £451,151

When we bought our house (in Glasgow), we were told our bid won "by the contents of a wallet". It was was nearly 20 years ago, so the bid was something £136,151.50

Yeah odd numbers has been something a few friends have done. My friend sold her flat for £122,222 and thought the buyer liked 2's.

Another friend used an odd number too and got the house.

Thanks all, will have a sit down with DH tonight and come up with a nice odd figure!

I guess my concern is that we end up paying over the odds but you're right prettybird that a house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it and it seems there's no option but to overpay in the current market.

No guarantees we'll even get it with our offer of course! But fingers crossed.

Last year our flat sold for x pounds plus 76 pence. We had three notes of interest and got two offers - someone at work was going for flats with a dozen notes of interest and she was going massively over the offers over. We put an offer on the one we bought before it went to closing date and negotiated but if it had gone to closing I imagine we would have ended up offering more.

Depending on the area of Edinburgh, some go significantly over, some don't - can your solicitor advise on the local micro-market?

It's pretty normal in and around the city centre.

Not so much on the outskirts of town.

I think Edinburgh has always had a healthy market for certain property types and areas. I wouldn't worry about it as long as you can afford your offer.

we had to bid over the home report valuation both times we bought. That said, I'd only proceed if I planned to be in it for the long term, with the indyref 2 being talked up, we proceeded on the basis we will only move again if things get so desperate we can't afford our mortgage (and we made sure we could still afford it if we became worse off - interest rates, tax rises etc)