Buying in a fast-moving market.

MortgageVirgin

Hi everyone,


Do you have any advice on how to get the property of your dreams in a market where houses are selling within days?


I live in a small but popular city and houses at or around £250k seem to go so quickly, even the ones I personally dislike!


We made an offer on one house a few weeks ago but were trumped by a cash buyer. Yesterday, we saw a house that we both instantly fell in love with. It's on at £250k but my partner suggested we offer below, so it gives us a chance to offer more if they don't go for it. The house is not fully on the market yet, we were the first to view and two other viewings were booked in for yesterday too. We offered £247k and the EA said he'd be in touch tomorrow, so I'm anxiously waiting.


We have a piece of paper stating how much we could borrow (not quite a MiP, as we had not found a place we wanted and our mortgage consultant didn't want to add unnecessary searches to our credit reports). My partner has sold his place already and we have a deposit just over £100k from our savings and his equity.


What else can we do to get our offer accepted?


Thanks!

zarf2007

MortgageVirgin wrote: »

Hi everyone,


Do you have any advice on how to get the property of your dreams in a market where houses are selling within days?


I live in a small but popular city and houses at or around £250k seem to go so quickly, even the ones I personally dislike!


We made an offer on one house a few weeks ago but were trumped by a cash buyer. Yesterday, we saw a house that we both instantly fell in love with. It's on at £250k but my partner suggested we offer below, so it gives us a chance to offer more if they don't go for it. The house is not fully on the market yet, we were the first to view and two other viewings were booked in for yesterday too. We offered £247k and the EA said he'd be in touch tomorrow, so I'm anxiously waiting.


We have a piece of paper stating how much we could borrow (not quite a MiP, as we had not found a place we wanted and our mortgage consultant didn't want to add unnecessary searches to our credit reports). My partner has sold his place already and we have a deposit just over £100k from our savings and his equity.


What else can we do to get our offer accepted?


Thanks!

while offering under is sound advice in a cool market I would suggest offering asking price and then increasing in a hot market or someone else will.

Snakey

Where I live the market's gone crazy, so when I found a place I liked I offered well over asking price to make sure I got it. My offer was based on how much the market was likely to rise between offer and exchange (based on what it had done in the last 12-18 months). So maybe I overpaid, but I'm in here and I love it.

You're gambling that the market will keep rising of course, and if everyone followed my advice there'd be a lot of happy sellers and a bunch of buyers would get burned eventually when it peaked, but then if you thought it was going to drop you wouldn't be buying yet anyway would you.

Personally I intend to live here for many years and so even if there's a bit of a dip, prices will catch up to what I paid eventually. So far, no sign of a dip - a flat went on just the other day that's identical to mine albeit already refurbished and the asking price is £85k more.

ACG

I think ultimately it comes down to how much the vendors want for the house. You can make offers all day long but they will know what they want.

When I sold my house, I knew exactly how much I would accept and thats what I held out for... that was when the market was on it !!!.

Annie1960

It also depends on your position - do you have something to sell or are you in rented? You will strengthen your position if you are in rented, or under offer and the chain beneath you is short.

firebird082

If you have fallen in love with it, I would offer the asking price. That's what we did. We still ended up having to go higher, but I think if we'd offered below then we probably wouldn't even have been in the second half of the race! If houses are selling that quickly, they are not going for below asking price.

MortgageVirgin

Thanks everyone! Our first offer was rejected, so we offered asking price, providing that the house did not go fully on the market and no more viewings were booked, which they accepted! Yay!

thequant

MortgageVirgin wrote: »

What else can we do to get our offer accepted?


Thanks!

Offer 20% above asking


Sleep with the vendor


Blow the EA off so he doesn't put other offers forward.


Where there is will, there is a way, you just have to be creative

MortgageVirgin

*snorts* EAs have such a greasy look and attitude. Ick!

firebird082

MortgageVirgin wrote: »

Thanks everyone! Our first offer was rejected, so we offered asking price, providing that the house did not go fully on the market and no more viewings were booked, which they accepted! Yay!

Great news! :T Hopefully none of the other people who have already viewed make asking price offers as well...!

wrkactjob

Simple answer is don't, unless there is some necessity for you to be buying at this time, just wait for the market to cool, and there are already signs of this and talk of the inevitable bubble.