Is there any point viewing a house 10% over my budget? - Now: How much to offer?

Nenen

PeteW wrote: »

Well I phoned up about an hour ago and put in my offer of £230k. The agent got back to me fairly quickly to say the vendors had said no. He did however, say that they might be willing to take something 'closer to the stamp duty threshold' which sounds promising.

So the next question is how much should I offer next, and how long should I wait to make it?

It's a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question as it depends largely upon how much you want this house... is it really your dream home which you would be devastated to lose or 'merely' a house you'd quite like to live in but know you'd be equally happy to wait for something else (probably cheaper given the Nationwide BS news today) to come along?

I'm no expert but, having been reading these boards for over a year now and assimilated a consensus of opinion I'd say that if you desperately want this house (and know you can easily afford the mortgage and ride out any period of potential negative equity) if I were you I'd probably ring tomorrow late afternoon and offer 236,800. This figure is based on Doozergirl's advice in previous threads that offering a slightly 'odd' figure makes it look like you are scraping the barrel for all available finance and this is the absolute maximum you could manage.

If you only quite like the house and are prepared to lose it without angst then I'd wait until next Saturday and offer 234!

PeteW

I'd really rather not lose it as it seems so much nicer than anything else on the market in that area/price. So I think I may offer a bit higher and a bit sooner. I'm thinking about ringing up on monday and putting an offer in at £240k and then if that is rejected then going for the 'odd' figure later in the week - say £246,300 and see how that goes.

PeteW

In case anyone was wondering - they accepted our offer of £246,700 on Friday :beer:

Thanks for all the advice!

LindseyM

Congratulations!! :beer:

carpetbelly

well done!