Putting in an offer

[lboogy]

I've seen a house that I like. It's on for 750k which for the area is not unreasonable. The owner has clearly done a lot of work to the house but they've done a pretty shit job with the downstairs configuration. The kitchen is all along one side of the house. Open plan gone wrong imo. My max budget is 710. Would it be insulting to offer 680 ? The agent says they haven't had many viewings or an offer since it went on the market 4 months ago.

Well you can only ask, but 680 is a massive drop, so expect to be rebuffed. With such a good budget can you not wait until you find a house that ticks all your boxes? You don't sound that enamoured with this one.

It's more than 10% below the asking price which I think is the suggested starting point. But we just went in with our max offer for our new house which was 6% below the asking price and just held. We thought it was worth our max budget and possibly more but we simply couldn't go above that. They accept it straight off as we were proceedable buyers. They tried to get us to come another 10k but we said we just couldn't afford it and that was why our offer was the max budget. The agent knew this too as we told him our max budget when we were looking.

Word they can do is say no!

*worst

It's less than 10% so I would say give it a try. Nothing to lose.

As pp less than 10% not more than!

We got 6% off the house we are buying and accept 4% off selling ours.

I hate the negotiation games in house buying, maybe we've been unlucky in the process but if you need to go that far below the asking price I would go for the honesty approach of saying you like the house but £710k is the highest you can go and do a take it or leave it offer. Either that or I'd say 700k, see what they come back with but then do a take it or leave it ceiling offer of £710k. It sounds like you're happy to pay £710k and think it's worth it so wouldnt insult them with a really low offer. As I say this may be just be as a result of my own experience of very determined sellers (despite months and months on the market!)

Thanks everyone. I'll put in the offer and see what they say.