How much to offer?

so we are just starting house hunting and have no idea how much to offer? I know sellers can counter offer, but I dont know what is standard.

Did you offer a certain percentage below asking?

Also, I am looking on mynassau property and the assessed market value is much less (50-60K) less than asking. Is this market value accurate, should I be basing my offer on that.

Help! I am clueless.

Thanks

Re: How much to offer?

IMO The best thing to do on my nassau property is look at the comps. Also, I find Zillow is a better indicator as to what you should pay. I just had my house appraised for a refi and it was almost 200k more than the tax assessment. Zillow's estimate is the same as my appraisal.

Good luck!

Re: How much to offer?

In general you could could offer 9% less than asking price and thats mostly reasonable. For Example, Asking price of a home is $500,000. You offer 455,000. Less than that may not be entertained. HOWEVER, it really depends on...

a) how desperate/motivated the seller is
b) how many offers they have had
c) how long the house has been listed

You could potentially offer less and tell the seller that you can close right away. For more help with that you should talk to a real estate attorney. The guy I used was great. Check out his info Dan Boldi - Real Estate Attorney

Message edited 1/17/2010 12:25:04 AM.

Re: How much to offer?

are you working with real estate? becuase they should be running comps for you.

you can also go to mlsli.com and search sold homes within the last 6 months in that area.

A lot of homes right now are priced right because people know they might be on the market for awhile. I wouldn't offer less the 5% of the asking price, unless the comps show them selling for less.

I can't help you with the assesment value, I don't know anything about that.

All I can tell you though, is if you love the house, offer close to what you are willing to pay. I've learned its not worth someone else out bidding you if you love the house because you wanted to save 5-10K.

But there are people who owe more then its worth, and will not budge on the price even if comps are selling for less.
GL!

Re: How much to offer?

my uncle told me that around 12% below was a good place to start

Re: How much to offer?

Okay. I've just gone through this.

MyNassauProperty is NOT where you want to go for info. The comps are all too old to be helpful. The "assessed value" of the houses you're looking at are tens of thousands of dollars lower than they should be (good for the homeowner because that's what they base property tax on, but bad for a comparison shopper because it's not accurate). I'd say it would at least be good to check out square footage information for houses, but it's inaccurate there too: on the house we're buying the square footage is off by 250 sq. ft., and it lists the wrong number of bathrooms. It's not a good resource for a buyer. Skip it.

ListingBook.com is the best for that - you need an agent to sign you up for it, but any random agent you meet at an open house will probably do it for you. On Listingbook, you look at a house you like and click on "area sales" and it'll do the work for you and tell you all the comps in the area - what the asking price was and what the selling price was too. It offers pics of all the houses, and lists floor by floor what rooms there are. It's great.

PropertyShark.com is also a good reference site. Zillow will give you a map with recent sales so that's good. Their "zestimates" of what a house is worth are pretty off, though, if you compare them to what houses eventually sell for.

As for what to offer... we got into trouble when we listened to all the people who told us "It's a buyer's market; offer low, the sellers will be happy to get any offer at all!" That may be true sometimes... but not for us. We got burned on the first house we really wanted by offering 15% under asking (which was too high according to the comps. We bid about 10% under what it was really worth). The owner didn't even counter. And he called our RE Agent some bad names.

Asking prices are stupid. Asking prices can either be realistic, or it can be the owner living in la-la land. Don't worry about asking prices and what percentage below them to offer. If you see a house you want, do the research on ListingBook and PropertyShark and MLS to see what it's worth. Decide the maximum you're willing to pay for the house. Offer a little below that. Homeowners are getting burned by the fact that their homes are worth so much less than they were two years ago; in my experience, they don't want lowball offers. They want realistic ones.

I've seen A LOT of houses in the past few months, and I have to say that in most cases the asking prices weren't more than $0 - $25,000 over what people actually ended up paying for them. People who are trying to sell in January (very few!) aren't playing games, and if they want to sell, they price their houses fairly.

Re: How much to offer?

Posted by HeatherRose

are you working with real estate? becuase they should be running comps for you.

you can also go to mlsli.com and search sold homes within the last 6 months in that area.

A lot of homes right now are priced right because people know they might be on the market for awhile. I wouldn't offer less the 5% of the asking price, unless the comps show them selling for less.

I can't help you with the assesment value, I don't know anything about that.

All I can tell you though, is if you love the house, offer close to what you are willing to pay. I've learned its not worth someone else out bidding you if you love the house because you wanted to save 5-10K.

But there are people who owe more then its worth, and will not budge on the price even if comps are selling for less.
GL!