Right, I'm in a similar situation to the OP, and have recently made an offer on a property which was subsequently accepted.
I have never been so severely brown-nosed before, and to be honest, it made me feel sick. The guy at the estate agents dealing with my case was so OTT it was unbelievable. But I guess they wouldn't get anywhere if they weren't.
NEVER EVER EVER (!) under any circumstances accept financial advise from anybody the estate agent recommends (i.e their in house mortgage advisor etc). If you want to make an offer below the asking price and they know you can afford more, they will flatly refuse until you meet near to the asking price. The mortgage advisor with the estate agency that I'm going through really pushed hard to sell me their mortgage deal, saying it was one of the best, better than Halifax (who I'm with), and when I told him we're sorted on that front, he carried on and on and on trying to convince me that I'd be better off going through them than the bank. Don't do it. When he eventually took the hint that I wouldn't be using them, he became very huffy and rude and hung up on me! He wanted his big fat cut basically.
We went with the Halifax, were told we could borrow £160,000 and we could've gone upto £200,000 (with our deposit plus a bit of a loan from the 'rents).
The house we found was up for £195,000, and we made an offer of £185,000 based on the fact that the house needed cosmetic work, and we couldn't afford more as we were already stretching our budget (we were, but could've borrowed more if necessary). I told the estate agent the bank would loan us £160,000, and we had a £20k deposit upon which the inlaws were going to ad £5k, and gave the impression we couldn't afford more. The next day we expected to hear that our offer was refused (most first offers are), but alas, no! Our offer was accepted
I'd recommend going through a building society for a mortgage, and to go with the solicitor/conveyancer service they offer because this will save you a mahoosive amount of fuss even if it does cost a bit more (although it won't necessarily cost more).
You'll get call after call after call from the estate agents wanting your solicitors details, and once they've got them, you won't hear from them for ages. I haven't heard from mine in 3 weeks!
Yay!!!
Getting on the ladder can be dificult, but if you're in the right situation, you should be fine. Don't take out any credit whatsoever, because the bank won't like it and this will affect the offer they give you.
The above may not all necessarily be applicable to you now, but it's the way it all worked out for us.
Good luck with the move!
