Putting in cheeky offer on houses?

[Mouthfulofquiz]

If you view a house, and like it, but it needs about 30k spending on it before it will become modernised - are you within your rights to bung in an offer for 30k less or is that massively taking the piss?
I've only bought one house before which had just been updated by a builder so was all good to go! This one needs central heating, boiler, bathroom and kitchen (both unsafe) and wiring just for starters. If it was me living there on my own I would be able to just to the required works to make it safe but as I would be bringing the young family with me it's a bit different isnt it?
I've been tactfully trying to extract info from the estate agent but to little avail!
So in essence: on a 200k house, is an offer of 170k going to make me an unreasonable twat?

In the process of selling our house at the moment. We had feedback from the estate agents indicating that one of the viewers thought the house was priced too highly. All I could think was 'well, you priced it not me!!' The asking price is just the opinion of the estate agents. Yes, if may be based in information from local sales bug to be honest, we would accept along less than that.

Yes, we had that, had to keep dropping the price, eventually rented it out. But from a buyers point of view, if you don't ask, you don't get.

We bought a house in a similar condition to the one you would like to buy, for more than 20% less than the asking price.

Originally, we offered about 15% less, but then the survey revealed some even-more-exciting work that needed doing, and we reduced our offer by the exact price of that work (got quotes from agreed tradesmen).

It's a fairly individual house, so few other prices to compare with, so we went for the rational 'get quotes and deduct the actual price of the work' approach, as the expensive stuff that needed doing was the type of stuff that 'doesn't show' so the price hadn't been reduced much to take account of it...ie the bathrooms obviously needed doing, so the price took account of that, but the unearthed electrics were invisible...

Kirsty and phil's mantra - a house is only worth what someone will pay. Make a cheeky offer, it may be accepted. It partly depends on how much the vendors need to sell and what they NEED to get for their house to put towards the next.
The worst that will happen is they will say no. In which case you negotiate or walk away.

Check Rightmove and Zoopla for what others have sold for in the street and similar houses in the area recently so you have something concrete to explain why you're offering less, plus list all the work that needs doing. EA over charge massively sometimes in my experience and having kept an eye on property prices in my area for the past couple of years I can see which ones price realistically - and that's usually 15% below what others try to charge.

I agree with Shakey - I don't think it unreasonable to make a significantly lower offer. You need to be able to walk in and know it's warm and safe for the family, and it'll need plenty of work, and the worst they can do is say "NO!"

If the property has been on the market for a while and / or left to need the work, then the sooner they are shot of it, the better. In the current climate I don't know how many people will turn down lots of offers, knowing there are not a massive number of new buyers (esp when the property is over 150K)

(Sold a house at auction... first day it was listed a builder came along and offered 50% of what it eventually sold for, so don't think your offer is "too cheeky" by any means! Offer was 80K, sold for 160K, after lots of work on it {auctioneer said 'most sky he had seen in 30 years'} it was sold again 9 months later for 225K. Two women bought it as an investment, no idea what was spent on it, but guessing 20K.)