Gutted on losing a house but can't justify the price

mi-key

BMTH said:

Learning off this then, how on earth would I approach houses that come on the market in the future? Lets say another one comes on today which we really like, put an offer in again a couple days later maybe £5-10K over this time only to be told the same thing... 'the sellers know its desirable so are waiting for any better offers'.

It depends how the house is advertised. If it is a set price, and not offers over, if you offer the full asking price it will often get accepted straight away. If its offers over you then its quite common for the seller to see what comes in, at least for a few weeks.

People seem to have this weird belief that they have to try and chip off as much money as possible when buying or they are getting conned somehow. As others have said, over the lifetime of your mortgage, a few thousand here or there makes no real difference.

If you find a house you want within your budget range, then buy it and don't faff about. You can wait forever for something better to come along and it may never do, and prices can go up while you are waiting so you end up spending more than you would have if you had bought the first place you wanted

diystarter7

Hi OP, all

To be clear:

'Offers over' are not set in stone and that is a fact.

I've seen a house that needed doing up on our road a few months ago on the market for offers over xxxx. However, it went for 10k less. In the schem of things 1ok out of 800k is not a lot but it is not over

The second point, offer over, lets use the OP' example, 240k. It may sell for less, 240 or even a lot more then the 240 as it depends on who, how many are interested.

Then again the seller may change their minds and not sell

This is why we try to go for chain free.

OP, if your heart is set on it, go for it, work on it. If you miss this, trust me there will be another

aoleks

losing a house you like for 2 months' rent is, in my opinion, not a smart move, but we all have limits and reasons for what we do, so fair enough.

mi-key

diystarter7 said:

Hi OP, all

To be clear:

'Offers over' are not set in stone and that is a fact.

I've seen a house that needed doing up on our road a few months ago on the market for offers over xxxx. However, it went for 10k less. In the schem of things 1ok out of 800k is not a lot but it is not over

The second point, offer over, lets use the OP' example, 240k. It may sell for less, 240 or even a lot more then the 240 as it depends on who, how many are interested.

Then again the seller may change their minds and not sell

This is why we try to go for chain free.

OP, if your heart is set on it, go for it, work on it. If you miss this, trust me there will be another

It very much depends how much interest they have though. If none for a few months, then yes, it is less likely to be set in stone. If they are getting plenty of viewings and people making offers, then it generally will be as they will be more confident they will get more than asking. 

comeandgo

If the property is on sale for “ offers over” then they may not be willing to sell to a FTB as FTB may not have enough of a deposit to weather the difference if the mortgage value is less than they offered.  

lookstraightahead

comeandgo said:

If the property is on sale for “ offers over” then they may not be willing to sell to a FTB as FTB may not have enough of a deposit to weather the difference if the mortgage value is less than they offered.  

It's a bit uncomfortable for anyone to pay over value tbh, even if you can afford to do so. So it's a risky business for a vendor to cut off a whole section of no chain buyers by refusing to sell to FTB. 

diystarter7

mi-key said:

diystarter7 said:

Hi OP, all

To be clear:

'Offers over' are not set in stone and that is a fact.

I've seen a house that needed doing up on our road a few months ago on the market for offers over xxxx. However, it went for 10k less. In the schem of things 1ok out of 800k is not a lot but it is not over

The second point, offer over, lets use the OP' example, 240k. It may sell for less, 240 or even a lot more then the 240 as it depends on who, how many are interested.

Then again the seller may change their minds and not sell

This is why we try to go for chain free.

OP, if your heart is set on it, go for it, work on it. If you miss this, trust me there will be another

It very much depends how much interest they have though. If none for a few months, then yes, it is less likely to be set in stone. If they are getting plenty of viewings and people making offers, then it generally will be as they will be more confident they will get more than asking. 

True, but an informed, serious seller can and does sell to a lower offer if it they feel, rightly or wrongly there is less of risk of not completing/etc

I've posted about this before, one of our kids bought on our road a detached house and it had offers of over xxxx.  Thety were the second to offer over, then it became a fight between them and the others. Then our kid made a final offer, the other beat that and our kid matched it not bettered it as they were to rent out their present house and move into this so chain free - the owners went with our kid. The owners were moving to their other home near the beach so were also chain free. At times being achain free buyer helps.


The bottom line and the point i was trying to make is 'offers over' are never set in stonne and those new to property buying, offers over does not mean by 1 peny etc but can be any amount but could be less and I have seen that.

IMO, the seller in OP's case, the other buyers must be chain free as well otherwise why risk it over that amount

Good luck OP

gazfocus

I know how you feel @BMTH. We viewed a few houses in the area we are buying and one house, while needing some modernising, just felt like it was 'the one'. Both my wife and myself came out of that house and said 'this is it'. The house was on at £160k but we wanted to buy a house mortgage free and have enough to at least get professional decorators in and get the carpet replaced.

The next day we made an offer of £148k, which the EA said the seller would reject as he had the same offer the day before and had rejected it so we upped it to £152k. The seller rejected that so we said the most we could go to was £153k. The seller rejected that as well. We said we'd leave the offer on the table while we continue looking.

Viewed another 5 houses and each time we found ourselves comparing it to the one we'd offered on. The one we offered on had slightly bigger rooms which made the house much less cramped, more spacious hallway and landing but had a smaller rear garden. In the end, we decided we didn't want to lose out on the house we really liked so bit the bullet and went back at £156 which was accepted. 

Granted, we will now have to use credit cards for carpet or to decorate but it wasn't worth losing the house over £3k.

ManuelG

If I hadn't agreed to sell my house, I'd have been convinced you were talking about mine

Anyway, I know how you feel. Am still gutted we missed out on our purchase that we offered £15k over the asking price - somebody clearly offered more. The annoying thing is we could have gone higher, but chose not to. More fool us really, we fell into the trap of looking for value, rather than what the house was worth to *us*.

If, however, you have your limits and can't afford any higher, then something else *will* come along...

Zerforax

Stating the obvious but you don't know the vendor's intentions or thought process. To give a personal examples:

When selling, we had an offer at our asking price on the 1st day of viewings. Now, we were already minded to agree but as a number of parties had seen the property, we were just waiting for feedback from all of them. By the time we had feedback from all the others after 2 days, we received no other offers so we were going to accept the only offer we had. However, in the time I had a couple of work meetings before I could call the estate agent back, he called me and said they had increased their offer by another £5k. So we got an extra £5k even though we were going to accept their first offer!

On the flip side, when we were looking to buy, we offered the asking price on a property. They strung us along for 3 weeks and then it turned out they were trying to use our offer only to buy their "dream house" which had come onto the market. When they missed out, they pulled the property, even though we met their price.

Could be that they are waiting for more offers or feedback from all the viewings they already did. Could be they only care about the headline money and not speed/certainty of sale. Could be that they're not that serious about selling.

Do what is best for you. Don't stretch yourself too much but equally don't miss out on a dream home for a few thousand if it's realistic. Also depends what your dream house criteria is - can others easily meet it or is this unique or perfect for other reasons?