About to exchange - should I lower my offer?

Ath_Wat

I think the point is if the choice is between pulling out or making a lower offer, then make a lower offer.  You might as well give the seller the chance of carrying on with the lower offer.  That is if you have decided the transaction is really unsustainable for you in its current form.  After all in that case all you are doing is giving the seller an additional option; they can still say no, and they will be no worse off than if you had just pulled out.

If you are going to make a lower offer but then continue with the purchase if they don't accept it, that's a **** trick.  If the price is acceptable but you'd just prefer a lower one, then just carry on as you are at this point, doing anything else is not the act of a decent person.

tooldle

Interest rates of 8% are not exactly high, although I do appreciate in very recent years with historically low rates 8% may seem high. I've had two mortgages during which rates of around 8% were charged and i don't recall house valuations dropping on either of these occasions. On the first occasions there was strong positive growth and stagnation on the second. 
None of us can say with any confidence what will happen in the future, either nationally or locally. 
If it were me, and i decided to go ahead, i would make overpayments a priority to give additional wriggle room.
No harm in asking as long as you are prepared for the vendor to say no, or pull out of the transactions. There are still buyers out there who need only small mortgages or are paying cash. 

eidand

Do it. Let us know how it goes!

youth_leader

You have to look at the whole picture, are you expecting the vendor to pass this reduction up the chain? 

lookstraightahead

SuseOrm said:

@htcclub in answer to your why not just rent question- they are no rentals right now.  And the ones left are awful and likely to rise in cost. 

Don't agree sorry. 

Gycraig

tooldle said:

Interest rates of 8% are not exactly high, although I do appreciate in very recent years with historically low rates 8% may seem high. I've had two mortgages during which rates of around 8% were charged and i don't recall house valuations dropping on either of these occasions. On the first occasions there was strong positive growth and stagnation on the second. 
None of us can say with any confidence what will happen in the future, either nationally or locally. 
If it were me, and i decided to go ahead, i would make overpayments a priority to give additional wriggle room.
No harm in asking as long as you are prepared for the vendor to say no, or pull out of the transactions. There are still buyers out there who need only small mortgages or are paying cash. 

8% interest rates are absolutely massive when house prices have ballooned as high as they have. I was planning to sell my house and buy a bigger one, the idea of 6-8% mortgages has made me stay where I am as the mortgage would genuinely be insane on the new house 

also regarding rentals, mortgages are currently 2/3rds if the price of renting the same house where I live, if the mortgage for the landlord goes up rent isn’t going to stay the same. 

I would probably chance my arm but they could easily just tell you to jog on 

lookstraightahead

Op, I have always gone in to rentals to break chains and have always made the money back on the rent through being in a strong negotiating situation. All I meant was that when you do buy, you have to allow for ups and downs.

There are many who just wont go in to renting for whatever reason they can come up with (I think they're a bit scared 😊), it's not easy but it's do-able.

what I do know is if you're buying long term, once you're in (and can afford it) , you will kind of forget about it.

SusieT

If you did this you would need to adjust your mortgage, possibly have a different product if you changed the LTV into a different band. That could mean having much higher rates than you have secured. 
Personally I would not do it as I would hate to have someone do it to me, or for a seller to say they want more than agreed just before exchange - how would you feel if your seller had upped the price just before exchange - but it is your decision. 

nicknameless

RM_2013 said:

Personally I wouldn’t do this.  We in theory could Gazunder because I hold my hands up to being sucked into a bidding war and we’ve offered over asking price on the house.
however, we offered over with eyes wide open because it was a house we wanted that ticked all the boxes, I hadn’t seen anything else close to the price we have offered that gives us what we need.  We made the decision based on prices go down as well as up, we are putting a large deposit in, have a 5 year fixed deal and we intend to make this a family home and done see it as a business transaction.

i would be really upset if my buyers did this to me and I wouldn’t do this to my vendor and risk losing the sale

that said it does happen I just don’t personally agree with it.  I’d only reduce my offer of something came up in survey etc to warrant a lower offer.

good luck whatever you decide to do

Thankyou for this post.  We've just completed and moved into a house in a seemingly similar situation.  We paid £28k over asking and it was valued at only £10k over asking by our lender.  We went ahead and never even mentioned it to the vendor. Yes we are fortunate to be able to do that but we'd been looking for over a year, failed purchase, and at the price we paid we hadn't seen anything like this come to market.  It was in a slightly cheaper area.  Had it been advertised at what we paid I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

The house is amazing and we are enjoying 'showing it off' to friends and relatives.  We have a five year fix on reasonable LTV and our financial forecasts include an estimate of 9% interest rate in the period following (fixed at 2.39%).

We didn't mind putting more in - amount borrowed slightly lower and in theory another surveyor on another day would have valued at offer price.

This board is inhabited by two many black and white folk.  Did you offer over asking ad infinitum.

My sister offered well over asking too.  25 years ago in the house that she'll die in she says.

Do come round and enjoy some dinner anyone.

And to the OP - if you don't mind losing the house go right ahead.

Sarah1Mitty2

Edi81 said:

I can’t write what I want to but the words “don’t be a Turpin” come to mind. 

Gazundering is one of the worst aspects of the English property system. 

Not when interest rates on mortgages basically triple in a couple of weeks it isn`t! At the moment it is prudent to drop any previous offer to take account of this.