How do you know how much to offer?

[BudaBones]

We have seen a house we like and are deciding whether to put in an offer and if so how much.

We are pretty much cash buyers. We are very flexible with timing as we won't actually move till summer 2011. Current owners have built a new house in the bottom of the garden which will be ready in Jan. We can obv be very flexible with them on when they actually move. They seemed keen on this when we spoke to them. They also volunteered that they could keep an eye on the house for us.

There are 2 other interested parties who both have houses to sell - one is not even on market yet.

I have just spoken to the agent and he says that it is priced for some leeway/negotiation.

How the hell do you figure out what to offer? What would be insulting? What would be too much?

[somewhathorrified]

At the end of the day it depends how much you think it's worth to you. I'd say a safe offer in your position is about 5% below asking price, but that's just a personal opinion.

[BudaBones]

Thanks somewhathorrified. I kind of thought that.

Have spoken to estate agent and gotten some names of surveyors and spoken to one surveyor. He seemed surprised that we would commission a survey before agreeing a price but if we can't do what we want to do, we would not go ahead anyway.

[titchy]

I'd offer 10% below initially, then come up if needs be. Stress your flexibility and willing ness to do an early exchange with a longer completion.