How much to offer on a house?

[NewStart571]

I’ve been to see a house today that I really like. It’s been for sale since May and has been reduced two months ago by £10k.

It’s up for sale for OIRO £190k. My current house is under offer and my buyers are first time buyers.

Would it be unreasonable to offer £170k on the basis that it does need a lot of work done to it. It needs a new kitchen and a number of the windows are pretty rotten.

I’d appreciate your advice please as I don’t want to offend! Thanks.

We are currently in the process of moving. The market is super slow here at the moment and some houses I've seen on my searches are being reduced considerably every couple of weeks. With a property that's been on for 5-6 months, they and the agents are likely expecting a low offer. There's no harm in offering £170k. The worst they can say is no, they may come back with a counter offer and see where you stand that way. We've just bought a £280k house for £260k! We told them the truth, we really liked it and hadn't put an offer forward because we didn't want to cause offence, (we viewed it as another house on the same lane had been on longer and had been reduced so figured there was a good chance this one would go the same way, so I'd keep an eye on it and if the price dropped, hopefully snap it up before someone else had time to view first). It turned out that she'd had a change of mind and was moving in with family for a while instead of buying another property so could afford to accept lower. She said £265k and you can have it, we said we simply can't get that high, our max for purchase is £260k, she agreed it straight away. That house hadn't even been on for 2 months at that point. £20k might be a tad cheeky on a house that's at £190k but go in and be honest, we really like the house but it needs x, x and x done before we could settle in, which leaves us at £170k for the purchase price. They may snap your hand off if they're fed up of being on the market. If they come back with a counter offer, say you need to have a think, give it a little while, they may even end up calling you back if they think they've completely lost the sale. Make sure you tell them that you are proceedable and have a tiny 2 person chain, that's a strong position to be in.

YANBU, a lot of houses go for 10% lower than asking price especially in this market, I don't think it would be cheeky putting in that offer

Thank you!

So they refused it. Said they wanted £180.