What price should I start negotiations at and what should I include in my offer letter?

Posiex

Woah! I was seriously creeped out by that response til I realised I had posted under Rosewiled! It's the username I have for quite a few forums.

I tried to sign up with that name and was told the username already existed. Logged in to reply last night on my phone and it asked if I wanted to use the saved username and password for the site. Didn't even realise it wasn't Posiex. Have no recollection of signing up here before.

AnotherJoe

Posiex wrote: »

I set myself a budget of 80k because I don't like to be in debt and I want to be able to afford overpayments each month to pay off my mortgage as early as possible and have money left over each month to have an enjoyable life.

Everyone else, unanimously has given you the same great advice on what to do regards your offer letter so I'm going to respond just to this part which few have.
You are presumably quite young so many years ahead of you.
Time and inflation will take care of the mortgage. Dont obsess about overpayments, especially at the expense of your pension. Especially if your employer does salary sacrifice you can get £100 into a pension for only about £70 off your mortgage. The pension will grow even if modestly at 5% or so, and your mortgage will be at likely 2% or so.SO, pension shoudl eb where you shoudl focus.

There's a whole forum in here full of mortgage overpayers some earnestly and unwittingly losing thousands of pounds in tax relief every year to trim a few pounds off a mortgage that inflation would be reducing anyway.

You say you dont like to be in debt, another way to think of a pension is a reverse debt. At the moment, just starting out, you owe yourself a large pension debt and your present self needs to seriously consider how to pay that pension debt off.
Something to think about anyway.

Posiex

Depends on your definition of young haha. Wow! What a fantastic piece of advice and one that I hadn't even considered because my intentions for early mortgage repayment is (long story short) to put myself in a position where a pension is obsolete. I also desire to have assets more readily available than a pension in the case of financial trouble so your suggestion reminded me that I have my lifetime ISA which I can use to save money for later life with the option of withdrawing earlier if the need arises. If I die it is paid to my family. If I change my mind and decide I want to retire (not likely) I will have a pension fund. Initially I stand to save more by overpaying but as my mortgage capital reduces the LISA will be a better investment.

AnotherJoe

Posiex wrote: »

Depends on your definition of young haha. Wow! What a fantastic piece of advice and one that I hadn't even considered because my intentions for early mortgage repayment is (long story short) to put myself in a position where a pension is obsolete. I also desire to have assets more readily available than a pension in the case of financial trouble so your suggestion reminded me that I have my lifetime ISA which I can use to save money for later life with the option of withdrawing earlier if the need arises. If I die it is paid to my family. If I change my mind and decide I want to retire (not likely) I will have a pension fund. Initially I stand to save more by overpaying but as my mortgage capital reduces the LISA will be a better investment.

can you explain why you think that? I believe its likely to be wrong.

Posiex

Mortgage overpayment calculator.

If I overpay a cash sum of 4k on the annum of a 70k mortgage over 25 years at 1.5% I save “£1656 in interest alone”. If you consider that I might not be fortunate enough to get such a low rate, that the loan amount is likely to be higher because theres nothing I want in my budget and that I will be overpaying from month 1, rather than month 12, then the amount I will save in the first year could be a lot higher.

If I instead max out my Lifetime ISA with that 4k I will get 1k in bonus. If I consistently overpay my mortgage by 4k per year, around year 4/5 paying 4k off my mortgage will save me less than 1k in interest so then I could max out the LISA before overpaying the mortgage.

If I pull my finger out and get a higher paid job after I graduate I wont make it to year 5 with a mortgage. Will see how that works out lol.

AnotherJoe

You've forgotten growth in the LISA. Over time you should be able to get 5%. So that's 6.25% vs 1.5#

Posiex

I’m not following. What do you mean by growth? Interest? Where are your figures of 5 and 6.25% coming from?