House buying in Edinburgh - what to offer?

mattie_uk

I gather from the solicitor that there's one other note of interest, however they've re-marketed following a pervious sale collapse and the person interested is apparently a previous bidder. No idea what that means, although they have only held the offers window open for a fortnight which suggerts they got a decent offer in from the repeat bidder and are just testing if any are higher. We'll see.

mattie_uk

DottieDam wrote: »

We left Edinburgh because most properties were going way above the valuation, which meant we would have had to have that on-top of our deposit.

Expect people to put in high offers and maybe be prepared to lose a few times to gauge the system!?

Good luck! On the whole, I much prefer the Scottish house-buying system even if I have been perpetually confused and family members are full of useless advice!

Sorry to hear you've had to move, it's certainly not a cheap city and we've had to rein in our expectations a fair bit.

I wish we could blend the two systems - in england we bought and sold both our houses within a reasonable rate of the asking price, althugh got gazundered a bit on last sale (thanks Brexit!), which I prefer to the Scottish closed-bid approach although I much prefer the early contractual agreement (subject to missuves, mortgage etc) of the Scottish system.

mattie_uk

Bah - just found out we missed it by 5k.

Bvv

Sorry to hear you missed out on the house. My partner and I bought a flat in Edinburgh last year and more or less deliberately ended up buying a property that did not work with a fixed bids before closing system. While many places will got to a closing date, by no means all do. Maybe it is worth having a look to see if there are houses in the area you want to buy in that don't (yet) have a closing date? We ended up negotiating with the sellers directly and ended up buying our flat for 8% above the asking price / 3% above the valuation (but another property we looked at sold for 22% above valuation).

What area of Edinburgh are you looking in and for what sort of houses? Since you're wanting to buy a house your situation will be different, but for flats I have found that traditional tenement properties tend to sell for much more (compared to their valuation) than properties with less character (i.e. flats built in the 80s/90s/00s).

sheramber

We have bought 4 houses in Scotland and have never bought one with a closing date.

We viewed, talked to the seller asking what they were looking for and then put in our offer.

When we sold our last house it went to a closing date because the estate agent already had three people on their books looking for out type of house. These people had already bid on another house but were not successful.
Our house was sold within a week.

mattie_uk

Bvv wrote: »

Sorry to hear you missed out on the house. My partner and I bought a flat in Edinburgh last year and more or less deliberately ended up buying a property that did not work with a fixed bids before closing system. While many places will got to a closing date, by no means all do. Maybe it is worth having a look to see if there are houses in the area you want to buy in that don't (yet) have a closing date? We ended up negotiating with the sellers directly and ended up buying our flat for 8% above the asking price / 3% above the valuation (but another property we looked at sold for 22% above valuation).

What area of Edinburgh are you looking in and for what sort of houses? Since you're wanting to buy a house your situation will be different, but for flats I have found that traditional tenement properties tend to sell for much more (compared to their valuation) than properties with less character (i.e. flats built in the 80s/90s/00s).

We'll probably start looking to avoid the closing date sales, as it seems tricky to really get to what the seller wants or to understand the market level fo the house before its all far too late!

We are keen to get something period, of which Edinburgh is thankfully blessed, but I think our ideal location of Leith/Newhaven (close to work for me, near bus/ ultimately tram for wife's work) is likely to be too expensive and too likely to see us get outbid. Wish we'd been looking 5 years ago! The house/flat (it was the upstairs two floors) we missed out on was in Colinton, which I did like, but was maybe a bit suburban and too lengthy a commute for my liking.

pinklady21

Sorry you missed out at the closing date, perhaps that one was not meant to be.
Use ESPC (Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre) and set up an alert for the areas you are most interested in. Rightmove too, although ESPC still seems to be popular for the Edinburgh area. Best of luck!

googler

mattie_uk wrote: »

... ideal location of Leith/Newhaven (close to work for me, near bus/ ultimately tram for wife's work) is likely to be too expensive and too likely to see us get outbid.

The house/flat (it was the upstairs two floors) we missed out on was in Colinton, which I did like, but was maybe a bit suburban and too lengthy a commute for my liking.

So .. where are your two workplaces, if not in Leith / Newhaven / Colinton?

mattie_uk

Wife Sighthill (not far from Colinton, and direct bus), me Leith. My wife currently gets tram from Newtown to stop 5 minutes from her work, and tram extension into Leith - if it ever happens - would be ideal.

The trip to Leith from Colinton was not pleasant, on the two times I've tried!

pinklady21

Have you tried to commute from Newhaven to Sighthill?

Depending on your budget - why not Comely Bank or Stockbridge?
Or some of the newish developments north of Ferry Road? (not period though)
Possibly Roseburn? A wee pocket that is usually a bit cheaper than upmarket Murrayfield round the corner!
Best of luck!