It’s pretty bloody scary coming away from a house viewing of a place that you know you want. The combination of the excitement of potentially living there + the idea of some other absolute arsehole outbidding you is enough to make anyone feel mildly nauseous.
When it comes to giving yourself the best chance of making a house yours, of course your actual offer is key but there’s so much more to it than money. We had our first offer accepted which was £20K under the asking price and £40K under the Zoopla estimate. On top of this, the seller stuck with us despite an attempted ‘gazumping’ so we must have done something right! It’s all about making yourself as appealing as possible to the people who have the power to make the house yours ie: the seller and estate agent.
#1 | If you’re chain-free, scream about it
If you’re a first time buyer, the biggie is being chain-free ie: not having to sell a property to fund your purchase. Estate agents and sellers bloody love a chain-free buyer so make it impossible for them to forget. To illustrate the power of this, we were almost ‘gazumped’ (when another buyer makes a higher offer after house being taken off the market which is accepted) but our position as first time buyers was so appealing that the seller went ahead with us and didn’t even ask us to up our offer.
#2 | Do everything in person and build rapport
Second best tip sounds daft but I’m convinced it made a big difference for us. Rather than calling/emailing the estate agent to make the offer, we went into the office in person. I guess if we were total knobs this would go against us, but we’re relatively friendly people and figured that humans are emotional beings so meeting us in person and building some sort of rapport could only be a good thing. Making our offer in person also gave us plenty of time to hammer home why we were such good buyers eg: no chain, deposit ready and waiting, approval-in-principle in place, very flexible with regards to move-in date.
This logic is the same for when you view the property, whether it’s with the estate agent or seller. You want to be as memorable as possible, for good reasons! There’s a number of ways to do this but we found that just having a good old natter and demonstrating an interest in not only the house but the person showing us round was pretty effective. Ultimately, people love talking about themselves so spending 5 mins listening to the estate agent tell you about their passion for live action role-play can only be a good thing.
#3 | Be relentlessly reliable and constantly on it
From the point of making your offer onwards you need to come across as well-prepared, serious buyers. Whether through highlighting that you have proof of your decision in principle and deposit ready, responding to contact immediately or being prepared with a counter-offer should your first offer not be accepted – this stuff is crucial. The key is to come across like you know what you’re doing – whether you actually know what you’re doing is irrelevant 🙂
If you do only one of these things, make it #2. Getting in the good books of the people that make the decisions is key.
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