Best-and-final offers are now routine on anything well priced. Winning one without overpaying is a matter of what you can offer that is not money.
Price is only one of four levers
A vendor is choosing between offers on price, on certainty, on timing and on chain length. Two of those cost you nothing. A cash-equivalent position with a flexible completion date routinely beats a higher offer that depends on somebody else's sale.
What to put in the offer letter
- Your position in plain terms: no chain, chain of two, chain unknown.
- The completion date you can actually meet, and the one you could stretch to.
- Your solicitor's name and firm.
- Anything the vendor has said they care about — most agents will tell you if you ask.
Sealed bids are not an auction
You are not bidding against a number, you are bidding against a person's plans. An offer twenty thousand lower that lets a family move before the school term wins more often than the arithmetic suggests.
The winning offer solved the vendor's problem. It rarely paid the most.Slateon Sales
