How low an offer without being insulting or should I not care?

[Ruralbliss]

There's two house for sale in our current search area neither of which meet our needs and both more than we want to spend.

I could live in either but won't want to be mortgaged up to the maximum amount for the compromises they'd each be (one is a good 15 mins walk beyond the zone we are aiming for, the other is far smaller than we'd like but very charming, nice garden etc super location) so would like to make chunky offers below asking price and if they are rejected so be it I'll wait for something closer to the price I am comfortable with ticking more of my must haves. Both have been listed since Aug 2021 with no price reductions.

Am feeling terribly British about the prospect of making low offers but having recently been on the receiving end of a would-be buyer making low offer the other week it didn't bother me too much and had I had no further offers might have been grateful for that one low offer than have none at all.

I guess it depends on the sellers drivers for moving and how urgent they are. If they are happy to wait for higher offers they will but if need to get sold then might consider a 20% reduction.

The one I think is more likely to accept a low offer is a nice house on a 1990s edge of town estate with Dual carriageway A-road thundering past the back garden.
Assume if this is putting buyers off now then I would expect to have a hard time selling it myself (plus accepting the risk to life of our cats!)

Any thoughts on low offers or not appreciated

Just make the offer. They will either accept it as a start point for a negotiation or not. This is a business transaction not a personal relationship.

You shouldn't need to worry about being insulting- as others say it is a business transaction. But it will help your case if you back up your offer with sold prices comparisons for similar local properties, to show you are being realistic.

Does it matter if you insult them? It’s not like you’re going to be best friends or anything.

To be fair if it is 340 on a 415 house that’s a massive drop and I’d be surprised if they accepted.

I’d also say if they were willing to sell it for 340 then they’d not keep it on a year at 415. But still offer.

A house near us has been on for 2 years at same asking price. We offered £5000 less so around 1.5% and not accepted. Seller believes it should be worth more now due to market madness.
Some sellers are a bit unreasonable but obviously that is their right.

I think your dad's warming up technique sounds good. I might use it myself when i move again and I'm testing the water.

I experienced bad scarcity mindset when I was buying this house, panicking every time, ''if I miss out on this house, it'll be a disaster''.

But I suppose the psychological strategy is to try and pass that scarcity mindset on to the vendor so that they panic about the scarcity of offers.

Ps I know that it does depend what the market is like when you're buying!

If there are genuine offers, I accept the market is against me. But I was looking around a house once and the estate agent was taking fake calls ''Oh yes, I'm showing somebody round that house at the moment''/ I was getting stressed and thinking I need to make an OFFER now! But luckily my Dad shut down the pantomime, he said to her 'loooook, we're after an easy buy here, not getting in to a bidding war'' and she stopped performing.

I’ve just accepted a 10% reduction on a flat we’re selling in central London. I was a bit offended by the low offer but we got several in the same range so had to accept that it was a fair price. However, the couple who have bought it did start off with a ridiculously low offer a couple of months back (20%) which has lost our good feeling tbh. We won’t be leaving them any nice gifts for when they move in, and we won’t be fixing a few minor problems we would have felt morally obliged to fix had they not been so tough in negotiating to the point where certain comments they made did offend. We would rather have sold to anyone but them but they are in a good position to proceed quickly.
My point is that 20% is a huge reduction- be prepared for bad feeling if you do manage to buy at that price.