Advice on best and final offer

Brucealmighty

Alchemist - that's interesting to hear your experience has been similar. The last time we bought a house was in 2011 and the market in our area was really slow - certainly no one was bidding over asking price. Starting to think we might have been a bit naive about how competitive the market is these days.

mashmash90

Last year we were trying to buy in a very bouyant market- first place we saw was on the market for 180K, we fell in love made an offer, went to blind bid stage and we said let's do 205K (as we could afford it with the deposit we had). We later found out that despite 25K over asking price, we were still only joint 2nd out of 9 offers. We didn't get that property. Later we saw another one in same area, similar size etc. It was on the market for 200K and we ended up being accepted at 205K. Got to mortgage stage and what do you know, it got down-valued and was told it's only worth 185K. I was so devastated as it was such a vicious circle (we didn't have 25K to cover the shortfall!) so feel your dilemma. I think offer what you think it's worth as no matter how buoyant the market, the mortgage companies won't really care if the comparables are not there and you don't want to waste your money paying valuation fees etc. We tried to appeal their decision at the time but it didn't get anywhere as I heard it never does.

densol_2

How did you get on ?

Remember house " sold " 3-6 months ago would have been on the market 6-9 months ago, maybe longer due to conveyancing and time lag, and certainly in greater london, they would have increased quite a bit in price in that time.

alchemist.1

Brucealmighty wrote: »

Alchemist - that's interesting to hear your experience has been similar. The last time we bought a house was in 2011 and the market in our area was really slow - certainly no one was bidding over asking price. Starting to think we might have been a bit naive about how competitive the market is these days.

It's only become like that over the last 3-4 months for us. Some of the properties are now showing up on land registry as sold for the higher figures suggested.

We have been told that the one we are looking at now will go over asking price. Listed at least 10% above previously sold prices and requiring a lot more work.

This is in the Northwest.