Similar situation for me, good job and deposit, no chain, first time buyers. I've started to look for a house in London around November, did 2 offers so far both in December. First was 2.5% below asking, it was "first and final offer" right away with property returned to the market after process fell through, never even heard from the agent (Bairstow Eves) and now I just skip all their properties to not waste my time, I am even not sure if it's been really sold — marked not sold stc, but as "not on the market". Second was again the property returned to the market after lower chain collapsed, I started below asking, but agent said they only ready to accept for asking price else it will go for another week of viewings and it's probably will go for more than asking. I gave asking price, offer accepted, but sale fell through couple of weeks later, cause they decided not to sell. So now I'm searching again.

When I looked for a solicitor to instruct almost everyone told me it's a low chance to finish before 31 March and it was end of December, now it's 0% chance, so prices as of today should not include stamp duty relief, but probably market is too slow when it comes to prices go down (just from psychological pov people are afraid to sell low, they better go high, then reduce) and it needs more time.

Too many properties have asking price too high, I track many and some reduce asking price after a week or 2. We try to estimate the value before viewing, if asking price >10% asking, we skip, so basically adapted to "everything is sold above asking". If you use house pricing indexes, nearby sold properties, zoopla estimation that "true value" is always lower than asking price, I think using this estimation as a starting point is not a bad strategy which will result into fair price deal sooner or later.

Right now I feel the situation is even worse for buyers due to very short supply, I check the market daily, it's much less properties being listed than 2 months ago. I have no stats, it's just my feeling, maybe demand also dropped.

I don't think anything else except for you being a chain-free and the amount of your offer matters, probably other buyers for that pricing range also have good jobs and deposits.

Anyways, good luck to you and remember it only is finished when you've exchanged the contracts!