Questions towards house purchase and mortgage

We're a family relocating to London on a skilled worker visa, HHI would be around 300K GBP. We plan to stay and buy a house. We have about 630K in liquid savings, expecting to have 700K in a year. The type of 3-4 bedroom suburban London houses in the neighborhoods we are interested in seem to go for 900K-1M.

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1. How much to borrow?

I understand that LTV below 60% gives the best rates, so I intend to earmark at least 450K towards the house (400K deposit, 50K for stamp duty and other purchase expenses).

I know some people prefer to maximize the LTV, but we would not feel comfortable with the monthly payment that would result from this, so it's not a risk we want to take.

I do wonder though what we should do with the rest of our money - say about 200K. Put it towards the house to reduce loan and monthly payment, or invest? What should we consider here when deciding? What would your advice to HENRY households?

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2. How much is maintenance expected to be?

Some sources say to expect 1% of the house's value to go to maintenance. That means 833 GBP monthly for a 1M house. Is this exaggerated?

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3. How to find out real house prices?

In my home country, deals are often closed well below the asking price for houses.

Are there reliable sources for final house prices? Do they tend to go below the asking prices we see on Rightmove, Zoopla etc? Are the listings under "Sold" there reliable?