Lowest under asking you've offered and been accepted?

[Anotherpointofview1]

We have seen an old farm house with a small bit (2 acres, essentially what surrounds the farm house and outbuilding) of land and a messy barn we like the look of. Attractive but extremely dipladated (think just about mortgagable) Tempted to go and see it but its a few hundred over what we'd want to pay/what it's worth in current condition - inevitably, it's being sold with "development potential". It's been on since feb 2020 so I know logically there's no point seeing or offering since in general houses on that long without a price drop have owners who have decided what they're "worth" and won't drop below that...Still it would be amazing if we could do it.

Anyone had any experience of offering significantly below in similar or indeed any circumstances and being accepted- for what it's worth it's on for 970k. In my experience it's been that anything more than 10% less is considered "cheeky"/not worth bothering to offer but interested to see if anyone has had alternate experience...

I got £100k off one.

Dino what was the initial asking price? 100k off a 200k asking, or 100k off 3m?!

We had an offer accepted of £1.1 for a property on for £1.325. It had been on for 10 months though and we could pay cash. Probate sale.

Its circumstances isn't it, we accepted an extremely low offer for our house from the developer we sold to in a part ex deal for our current house.

At the time I was really torn and had a grump on throughout the exchange process, but now I'm so pleased, nothing as nice (in budget) has come on the market and old neighbours have has their house on the market for months and months.

So I guess if you're in a strong position it's often worth a cheeky offer.

@Anothernamebitesthedust per second para its on for 970k I'm not sure how much we would want it for but a lot less than that! On since Feb last year.

We looked at a house listed for £1.25m. We offered on something else instead. We then got a call to let us know they'd dropped the price to £1m and were we still interested.

@Anotherpointofview1 - you could start at £800k (if that's acceptable for you) and see how low they come..

£65k off a £350k house.

£125k off a£400k house, but 75k of that was lopped off after a disastrous survey.

We bought our first place for 37 less than the 180 asking so 20% off asking. We were FTB so no chain and we said that we would be refurbishing so we wouldn't be quibbling over electrics, boiler, kitchen or bathroom fittings later down the line.

20%

If you want it, offer what you think it's worth. If you have a good position financially (i.e. large deposit, could exchange quickly, no chain etc.), make that clear in a written offer.

It is one thing making a cheeky offer on a house that is worth the asking price, something else completely to make a low offer on something that's overpriced.

We offered 45k under asking price for our first house that was on at 265k recently dropped from 295k. The agent didn't even want to put the offer forward. We ended up paying 225k. This year we offered 80k less than asking price on a 450k house, which was accepted, although we withdrew the offer as they had claimed the garden belonged to the house but had a right of way, whereas searches showed that the land was communal. They've put that house back on the market for what we offered.

Our current house, we bought this year when the market was going crazy and we priced up the work that needed doing (kitchen and two bathrooms) and offered 15k less than asking price (asking price was the going rate per square footage for the area in immaculate condition). That is what we bought it at, despite hearing from all the agents we visited with that no one was making offers at the moment.

We make clear how we are calculating our offer when we make it and our position as buyers. So it's clear we have given it a lot of thought and are not just plucking prices out of thin air.

Sometimes, if properties are seriously overpriced, no one makes an offer because they assume it won't be accepted (OH is a former estate agent btw, so he has seen this so often!).

What do you have to lose, really?

Thanks @Whoateallthestuffingballs that's helpful. I'd been thinking about something like that but only worry is that as the (falling down/may have to be knocked down) barn is so large it somewhat skews a price per sq ft cost.

I'd probably sit down with a pen and paper to get rough costs of how much it would take to make the barn solid and watertight (you can get broad ballpark figures on the internet if you don't have a builder!). And just include the farmhouse in your calculations of the price per square footage of the buildings.

Also, it depends what the deal is with the barn - if they are selling it at a price with development potential, but the barn needs rebuilding, what it's worth will depend if it has planning permission and could be torn down and rebuilt as new (more likely to interest a developer) or whether it has to be restored like for like because it's listed or AONB, in which case it would be an absolute money pit and holds out less chance of a profit.

Ahh thats interesting you said about listed - both barn and house are grade 2 listed apparently. We've owned such houses before but I hadn't clocked that that might be a reason no developer has touched it.