Should I write a letter to the seller to make a a case for why they should accept our offer?

Grumpy_chap

Make an offer of what you are willing (and able) to pay for the property.
That's that really.
The value of the property is what the value is.
The vendor either accepts your offer is the value of the property, or seeks or receives a higher value offer.
Your personal circumstances and what you can afford is irrelevant (so long as you can afford the offer you actually submit).

HillStreetBlues

Would be an interesting begging letter.
We really really like the property it's our dream one, could you sell it to us for £790k.
PS we can afford more, just we don't want to pay it.

uralmaid

Presumably you don't need to sell your current home to buy the one you want?  Otherwise the vendor  or their agent would not accept your offer at this stage.

bobster2

HillStreetBlues said:

Would be an interesting begging letter.
We really really like the property it's our dream one, could you sell it to us for £790k.
PS we can afford more, just we don't want to pay it.

Indeed.

OP - would you be receptive to a letter from the seller making a passionate plea? Saying that they really need £830k from this sale so that they can buy their new dream home. So could you please get a slightly larger mortgage?

Midlander59

Just sell your current property to buy the next one

gazfocus

Being really honest, if I received a letter from a potential buyer, it might soften the blow of a low offer but I wouldn’t really be interested in an explanation as to why you can’t afford my house or why you just don’t want to pay the price I’m looking for. I would still be questioning why you viewed a house that you can’t afford. 

At the end of the day, it’s not the sellers problem that you don’t want to stretch far enough to pay their required price and if you let them know it’s the perfect house for you, they will likely hold out for more anyway hoping you’d pay it because afterall it’s the perfect house. 

Grumpy_chap

bobster2 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Would be an interesting begging letter.
We really really like the property it's our dream one, could you sell it to us for £790k.
PS we can afford more, just we don't want to pay it.

Indeed.

OP - would you be receptive to a letter from the seller making a passionate plea? Saying that they really need £830k from this sale so that they can buy their new dream home. So could you please get a slightly larger mortgage?

Oddly, something similar did happen when my Mum was looking to downsize from her house to a bungalow.  She saw one bungalow that was priced far higher than anything else in the area (by about £150k) but she decided to view in any case so that she would at least know what a bigger budget would get her.
The bungalow was nice enough, probably better suited to a family rather than downsizing older person, but really not worth anywhere near what the vendors were asking.  Mum fed back that the price seemed high compared to other properties she had viewed and the EA agreed but then said that is the amount the vendor requires as they wish to buy X property and they needed that amount from the current property plus maximum mortgage to be able to afford the X property.
Mum simply responded that she would like a Rolls Royce, could she sell her Focus for more than it is worth to make the RR affordable?

ReadySteadyPop

maxxpayne said:

Hello,

We just came back from visiting what looks like our dream property - only challenge, it's 30k over our budget - which we've already stretched by 90k.

Background - late last year when we started our house hunting, we spotted this property on sale for 850k. The listing description mentioned in range of 850-900k. So we disregarded it at that time, as we were ideally looking at properties at around 750k mark, as we wanted to keep our existing property as BTL and buy a new house as main residence.

Fast forward a few months, we found a property, got mortgage approved etc. but decided to pull out as we needed to make a number of compromises. It happened this week.

At the same time, we noted that the 850k property is now down to 800k, but with similar description, e.g. range of 800-850k - while I have no idea why estate agents do this, nevertheless went to visit the house with the hope of getting an idea of exactly what the owner wants.

After speaking to the agent, looks like the owner wants around 830k - which honestly is high for us. We'd prefer not have a mortgage of over 400k, so 800k was going to be the sweet spot.

So what are my options now? The house is in a nice place in north London with excellent schools nearby so it's a desirable place. I could max out at an offer of 810k at probably, taking out even more savings than I wanted.

Do you think it's worth for us to write an passionate plea as to how we love the house but don't have the budget to the owner and see if that works?

If they are realising that they need to do 50k price drops to get interest (how many other offers do they have?) you are in a strong position, except that you are already way over your comfortable budget? What is the price history of their house? Remember that borrowing costs have risen by a lot, they might be kite flyers who are about to come down to earth with a bump?

ReadySteadyPop

swingaloo said:

They have already dropped by £50,000.  It may or may not sell so depends how desperate they are. 
But, if you were the seller would you be willing to give up another £20.000 because someone wrote you a nice letter?

It depends on how many other offers they have, I`m guessing not many?

TroubledTarts

Looks like all the  mocking replies have scared the OP off.