To offer below asking price - how much less?

[DogLover20]

Is it common to make offers below asking price? And, if so, what’s an acceptable %? I have heard 10% is about acceptable but I guess it depends on the price of the house.
For example, with a budget of £500K-£540K (SE near London), is realistic to look at properties with an asking price of £570K ish and offer £30K-£40K less? And also, how likely it is we’d secure a house doing that?

My motto is if you don't ask, you don't get.

However, be careful because you could lose a house doing this if they think you're not a serious buyer. I'd need to know a bit about the seller's situation, but yes, I put in lots of cheeky offers each time we've bought.

@Dacadactyl and were they accepted or did you end up having to offer asking p?

In today’s market, where I am, if something was on for 570 I’d offer 540 with a view to getting to 550 after negotiating.

Though DH would probably persuade me to offer lower than that even, eg 525 with a view to getting to 535, or ‘530 take it or leave it no negotiation’.

whereas 18 months ago if it was on at 570 you’d have probably got it for 600.

I’m in the south east and things are only selling if they’ve been reduced by 10% or so, or if they are very very competitively priced to start with.

I just accepted an offer on my house (north west) after 10 days on the market. They offered under and I just said that I was only taking asking price and they agreed to that. My estate agent knows my area really well and priced it accurately so I was happy to stick to asking price.

None of our seriously cheeky offers were accepted, no.

Of the 2 houses we have bought, we paid 13% below asking price for our first house and just 4% below asking for the 2nd.

First house had more motivated seller though.

Might as well start with a low offer and work up though.

Start as low as you dare, 10% is not unreasonable. Buyers are in a much stronger position than sellers at the moment. You can always go up a bit from there if it's something your determined to have.

I accepted 8% less. But they were in a strong position and had a good solicitor. And I liked them!

We offered 15% less and we got it, but we offered shortly after Liz Truss fucked things up so it briefly became a buyer’s market, and the seller had already had two sales fall through so were getting desperate.

This piece of string question is impossible to answer. Unless you give us a link to the property. Otherwise you are getting people sharing their irrelevant opinion without any relation to the location or condition of the house you want to buy.

Post divorce I wanted shot of the ‘family home’ so was open to offers. I think any offer is worth a shot. The problem is when you get greedy sellers. As someone said above unless you link to the property we can’t help..

There is no answer to this question other than "it depends". It depends on the time, location, how the property market is doing, personality and motivations of the seller, advice they are getting from the agent, the sort of property, whether it's been competitively priced / overpriced, your position as a buyer and more. Any response you get based on the experience of others will reflect whatever the above was in relation to their particular purchase.

What is a greedy seller?

A seller who wants to

Sorry.. a seller who has an over inflated view of their home and isn’t realistic.

My interpretation of a greedy seller is one that just looks at the £££ rather than the whole situation.

For example, I offered £558k once on a £535k property in a bidding war, because £558k was my absolute max and I loved the house. Also true cash buyer, chain free.

They accepted an offer of £560k from buyers in a long chain.

For the sake of £2k it still baffles me! But it didn't turn out well for them, their buyers pulled out when the chain collapsed and they came back to us, but I'd found another by then.

The market changed in the meantime and they had to drop to £500k to sell. If they'd gone with us they would have had £58k more!

Sometimes that's caused by estate agents though, they gush and tell the homeowner it's worth £X amount just to get them to list with them, misleading them.

It doesn’t really depend on the price of the house. An offer of 10% under the asking price is always reasonable unless the market is hot, which it currently isn’t.
The offer may not be accepted but it shouldn’t be seen as insulting.

Hello, we made an offer last November on our house - 83% off the asking price and it was accepted. Current owners had to sell due to divorce and didn't have the luxury of time. We offered the max we could afford. Moved in couple of weeks ago and very happy

Where I am, properties are selling for around 10% over the asking price. It's impossible to say as local markets vary so much.
You could look up local sold prices against what they were on for. Or just offer what you're prepared to pay.

The market must be hot in your area then which is unusual at the moment. Obviously there is no point people offering 10% below in a local market where good properties are in extremely high demand.

We are in the south east and just had an offer accepted on a house for £605k it was on for £675. I think it is probably worth £650. The vendors weren't getting the offers in as it was highly priced. We put in a cheeky offer and to our surprise they accepted. Well worth an ask.

Of course you can try, but I'd be wary of falling in the trap of only looking at property that's over budget. If you have no luck securing one, the houses you can actually afford will start to appear inferior and you'll get stuck.

How do you know?

Because sometimes I save properties that I like or that are really close to me on the Rightmove app. Then when they've sold you can see exactly how much for after a while. Also, a relative nearby just sold theirs for over 10% of asking price.

@Tubbyinthehottub can I ask you, how do you actually find out the sold price? For example, if a property is market as sold and the listing price appears to be x, does it mean that’s the price it was sold for or is that the initial asking price and we won’t know what the buyer ended up paying?