Owning your own home

What i'm saying is we were happy with our offer. But we dont have hard cash to make up the difference.

But we dont have hard cash to make up the difference.

Very few do even as 2nd time buyers. Negotiations happen after valuation its totally normal. Every £ counts obviously but you can give them ultimatum too if you are happy to walk away if it comes to that.

But we dont have hard cash to make up the difference.

Dunno. I would look quite sceptically on anyone who can buy £x hundreds / thousands of house but can't find £30k. ISAs? Raid pensions? Sell some shit? Try another lender?

The truth is you could probably find the money (it's not £100k were are talking here) but it would be agonising, right?

So. FWIW I don't disagree that you have to renegotiate here, if it's too painful to get the money it's too painful. Just the way you go about it. I would lean towards 'well the bank said this but that's their opinion, I've tried to make up the shortfall as much as I could and can pay £x'. That way you get the house.

I was fully expecting our valuation to come in under our offer and I would have ignored it (unless it was £100k off, but then I would have walked, and checked myself, and started again). But they reckoned it was worth what we offered. That came in last week.

howard gies a sub

lol just that £30k he keeps behind the sofa then?

im with @Señor_Bear ; offer them £30k less and be prepared to walk

i guess the flip side is how would you respond if your buyers came back and asked the same of you?

But that is the decided value and other lenders will say the same thing. The vendors will either have to accept that the market has moved and the house is worth -£30k or seek out a buyer with more cash.

just that £30k he keeps behind the sofa then?

Unless he's cashing in all his savings / investments / retirement stuff to buy the house, then you would think there might be something kicking around somewhere.

It's a good point though. If you literally cannot find the money - because to make good your original offer you had to sell the family silver - it's probably not a sensible transaction and walking away now would probably be the fairest thing.

I would see if I can sell the property before Sunak Snack® ends at the negotiated price (-£30k) if I can then I'd tell Rogan to fuck off.

Doubt it though.

Just because you have made an offer in good faith doesn;t mean you should stick to it once more information becomes available.

I think there is an honest way to handle this without overpaying for an asset that the banks believe is worth less. You just say this is what e.g. Halifax have said. We are prepare to try another lender e.g. Barclays and see how they view the value of the asset.

@rogan I'd say drop the offer by the 30k if that's what's now affordable to you. If the seller wants to accept then great, if not then you'll have avoided being overextended. Just don't do the hardball thing, it's not the seller's 'problem'.

I would look quite sceptically on anyone who can buy £x hundreds / thousands of house but can't find £30k.

This is like 99% of homebuyers you're dismissing.

If the buyer has gone to the length of putting an offer in, they have prob done their research and know that specific market (size, location etc) at that exact point in time, as well as, or better than anyone else.

When ours got downvalued, I knew we still wouldn't find anywhere that we liked and had the same amount of space in a similar location for that amount - and hence we borrowed and made up as much as we could.

Ultimately you know how far you are comfortable going, but if renegotiating there's no harm in starting low until you get to that point. In rogan's position, sounds like they've got an extra 5 from the downvalue, and can find an extra 10, so maybe it's some where around the halfway mark.

Ours took 9 months from start to finish, i continued looking in that time and didn't find anything that persuaded us to back out. Have another look what's around and see if you can find anything you prefer first maybe.

Regarding getting another lender - our broker said the valuers are independent and assigned to postcodes, so regardless of who you go with, there's a high chance the same person will do the valuation. Not saying it's not worth a go though - just depends how long that process takes at the moment.

I believe we were possibly overpaying but were happy to do so, given over the mortgage term and that we're young, and it was a place we really liked it was fine by us.

The fact is we aren't however, willing to decimate every penny of our finances for it.

I agree with somewhat of @Howard perspecitve, there were bids, we won at that price and why should they take 30k less from us when there were potentially other that were in between those values. I guess its a game of wether they're prepared to wait 2-N more months to find out what another buyers lender says and if they have the same problem.

there were bids

even those people will ask for a discount, unless (delusional) cash buyer

This is like 99% of homebuyers you're dismissing.

Hah, maybe. Good thing I'm selling to the 1%...I hope.

Our mortgage valuation is booked for this Friday. I am now nervous.

Can I have some of what Howard is drinking at this time of the morning?

I am on team go back and renegotiate a lower offer based on the valuation

krug and/or cristal, by the sounds of things

I am on team go back and renegotiate a lower offer based on the valuation

FWIW my team of one's position is if you have to renegotiate then you have to renegotiate but the seller will look dimly on it (who cares I guess) and going in 'hard ball' is not the way to do it. Or maybe it is, if you don't give a fuck about whether you get the house or not.

I guess part of the seller's job is picking a buyer who can actually pay what they've offered and they might feel a bit silly that on this they failed.

I guess part of the seller's job is picking a buyer who can actually pay what they've offered and they might feel a bit silly that on this they failed.

How do you do this though? Ask for their bank statements?

It really depends how much you want the house and what you can afford but personally I don't think there's anything wrong with going back and saying the mortgage valuation is lower than expected which knocks onto our finances and hence we need to drop our offer by £Xk. You can be very apologetic but that's what the facts are.

The estate agent should be realistic enough to know that will probably knock on to other offers (although I would make that point) and make the point to the vendor. Not dropping by the full £30k would likely get some goodwill but ultimately it's down to what the vendors need out of the sale (maximum money, quick sale, etc)

For all we know, the rest of the bids were £20-30k lower and they couldn't believe someone was willing to set a new record price for the road in a pandemic and knew they were accepting an unrealistic offer, so won't be surprised when rogan comes back saying sorry Gov, throw us a bone

I guess part of the seller's job is picking a buyer who can actually pay what they've offered and they might feel a bit silly that on this they failed.

I think this is a somewhat different scenario though. It isn't the buyer that's let them down, it's the faceless bank and valuer.