Things I learnt..

mrginge

Here is my summary of the OP

Lie to your vendor.

Pretend that house buying is like being on X factor.

Become a nuisance to EAs, almost to the point of stalking them.

Get a good solicitor. Stalk them if required. Ring them up constantly if you feel the need. Or not if this will annoy them.

Get a good surveyor. Make sure you hassle them.

Get a good removal company. Perform background checks on their staff and hang round their offices in disguise while filming through the windows.

Marvel1

antcurious wrote: »

I thought I'd bullet point some of the more interesting things I picked up as a first time buyer, things that might just be of interest to someone else currently going through the process. These points will be obscure, and potentially irrelevant to most standard house buying transactions, but there might be something in here that could prove useful. I am going to present them here as “tips and tricks”, but with the disclaimer that I’m just some guy on the internet, do your own research.

• When making an offer on a house, you might want to consider pretending to have a bigger deposit than you actually have. I say this because we lost out on our dream house to another party who offered the same, but with a bigger deposit. The agent quite rightly advised the vendor to go with their offer as they seemed to be the stronger offer due to being less sensitive to a low valuation come mortgage time. In fact, you could go as far as to say you are a cash buyer, even if you’re not, just to get your offer accepted above that of another.

I stopped reading after this bad advice.

antcurious

dc197 wrote: »

Did the heartfelt letter succeed for you? What is the story there?

Yes it did, the seller offered us first refusal if their buyers ever failed, which is what happened. Worth noting they had a tight timeframe due to a move abroad, which quite probably worked in our favour.
Obviously, not every heartfelt letter will succeed and indeed not everyone can write a good one:beer:

marksoton

antcurious wrote: »

Yes it did, the seller offered us first refusal if their buyers ever failed, which is what happened. Worth noting they had a tight timeframe due to a move abroad, which quite probably worked in our favour.
Obviously, not every heartfelt letter will succeed and indeed not everyone can write a good one:beer:

If you sent me a heartfelt letter i'd simply mark you as desperate and make you pay more.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

marksoton wrote: »

If you sent me a heartfelt letter i'd simply mark you as desperate and make you pay more.

To be fair you probably would go back to him first if anything happened though, because you'd know he was going to pay through the nose.

antcurious

To those commenting on my first suggestion to lie. In my situation, I had to wait four months before the other buyers with their big deposit turned out to be flaky.
My point is I could have been the preferred buyer from the beginning simply by stating I had X deposit and in doing so save the seller and myself the 4 months heartache. I would have done this being aware of my own chances of having a mortgage ready come the time to exchange.

So personally I feel ethically ok about it depending on my own finances and on the knowledge the vendor ultimately just wants to get paid for the house. I am NOT advocating pretending you can buy something when you can't. This goes without saying.

antcurious

marksoton wrote: »

If you sent me a heartfelt letter i'd simply mark you as desperate and make you pay more.

Keep in mind, at this point you've already gone with the other offer. When that one goes belly-up, or if you just come back to me wanting to squeeze me for more money, I am IN the game, without the letter I am/was not.

antcurious

ScorpiondeRooftrouser wrote: »

To be fair you probably would go back to him first if anything happened though, because you'd know he was going to pay through the nose.

this. exactly.

antcurious

cjdavies wrote: »

I stopped reading after this bad advice.

I would have read on for pure entertainment value baby, bathwater.

cloo

I think a lot of agents do check buyer's positions, if they're any good. We sold to a 'potentially cash' buyer (ie he claimed he could go without mortgage if necessary, but was planning on getting one) and our agents checked his position.

It's probably not a great idea to risk a reputation as bullsh*tters with agents, as word might get around frankly and agents not recommend you as buyers when there's someone with no rep in the ring.