Making an offer

[~Hestia~]

At the risk of sounding a bit silly...

When you are interested in a house, and you want to make an offer, can you just give the figure you want and make it subject to finance. Then go see the bank.

Or do you need to find out how much you can borrow before you make an official offer?

Have no idea. Clearly!

[chody47]

You can make an offer and make it subject to finance. However, just be aware that if someone was to make a similar offer that wasn't subject to finance then its likely theirs will be accepted. If you can have finance sorted first it can make thing a little easier.

[Phteven]

You can make it subject to finance because finance is subject to the house.
It's good to talk things through and crunch some numbers with your lender before you make any offers so you have a ball park figure and provisional approval but before they finalise things lenders like to send through valuers and so on.

You make an offer subject to anything you like - even the vendor including a photo of their dog in a frilly tutu but the vendor has just as much right to say no

[Astrid]

With our bank we had pre approval, but even with that they wanted all offers we made to be subject to finance. The bank wants to know that you are not offering too much for the house

[~Hestia~]

Thanks girls! We haven't had a chance to go to the bank and I wasn't sure what you're 'supposed' to do. DH bought our house in the mid 90's and can't remember what he did! Anyway, having a second viewing of a house tomorrow morning so we'll see what happens

Meant to add - I think I'd feel better having spoken to the bank so guess we'll find time for that tomorrow too, exciting!

[Liviam]

Always have your offer subject to finance or otherwise you wont have an out if something happens and your finance falls through.

Doing this saved us from making a HUGE mistake.

[Cassius2]

i'd be getting some preapproval under your belt. it can take time and it makes any offers you do make that bit more enticing for the vendor.

[Miss.September]

Get the pre approval in writing. We're going through this at the moment, made the mistake of only getting verbal pre approval, lender told us to go and make our offer, we found another block $60,000 less than thought we'd borrow and lender has since said she can't help us. We've now been jumping through hoops for weeks and we're still no closer to getting the loan.

Getting it in writing would have saved us the heartbreak.

[~Hestia~]

Thanks everyone for the advice, we didn't get to view the house again as the vendor took an earlier offer. However the house has become available again so we are going to look at it this week. We have been to our bank so looks like we have a decision to make!

[Cassius2]

that's so exciting!!!

[Teeki]

How exciting, good luck! Still make your offer subject to finance though, even if you do have pre-approval it's very conditional and the actual loan could still get declined. A pre-approval is more of an indicator of what you could afford to borrow under certain circumstances.

[~Hestia~]

Thanks Teeki, I'm very new at this so any and all advice is appreciated

We have made an offer today so now we wait and see! I'm so excited and have everything crossed!

[Teeki]

Hope you get it, everything is crossed for you!