What is the difference between

What was the difference between the asking price of the house you bought and what you first offered? How about the difference between the asking price and what you settled on?

I'm just trying to get an idea of where to start our offer. I don't want to 'insult' the sellers but I want to start as low as possible.

TIA!

Re: What is the difference between

it really depends on the house itself.. the house we REALLLY wanted at first was listed for 279 but was only worth about 230 so we started there and worked out way up and i think our final offer was 265 but someone walked in last min with 275 cash and they took it.. our house we ended up buying was asking 325k originally listed for 365k. it needed up dating and there was no CO for the basement, we offered 300k they took it with smiles ontheir faces it had been listed well over a year.

Ask your agent they should be guideing you in the right direction on a fair offer

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ours was listed really well, so we offered asking, and they accepted it. others offered over asking (this was a year and a half ago). if priced well according to comps, don't be afraid to offer what it is worth.

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We offered 80k under asking price. Settled 49k under asking price.

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House was priced fairly. We bid 30,000 below asking, but wound up at 15,000 from asking.

All depends on if the house is priced right and comps, etc.

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we paid 9k below asking price but they had it priced fair to begin with...

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we paid 4k below asking... i think also what drove up the offer price is we bought during that whole tax credit deadline period so there were multiple bidding wars we always got into on a lot of houses, where we lost out. we really liked this house so after our initial offer (about 15k below) we just matched the counter offer they came back with.. if we would have waited a few months later though we would have gotten a house at a lower interest rate and prob for a lower price... oh well!

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I hate to ask this- but what do you mean by 'comps'?

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Ok- the house went from 399,990 to 369,990. It's been on the market for quite some time. It's an old house, but updated. We are going back again tomorrow to look in more detail because the first time we looked it was way over our affordability. But- say the roof and windows and everything are just swell- would it be unreasonable to start at 345,000? Or do you think that's steep?

ETA: When they had the house on the market for 399,990, they had an offer for around what they're asking now and they declined. Now, they are kicking themselves.

Message edited 10/29/2010 7:56:20 AM.

Re: What is the difference between

see what similair houses in the area have sold for in the last few months. that is actually something the realtor should be doing...that you should give you an idea of what the house is worth in this market...

you can buy a house for listing price and get a great deal. you can get 50k off a house and get a bad deal. it's all relative to how well the house is listed.

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the house we bought was exactly what we wanted, priced right where it should be(still below our maximum)but we didn't want to get into a situation where we would be outbid so we only offered 5k less then asking price. they came back at 4,500 less then asking price and we accpeted. we were more then willing to buy it for full price but we thought we should at least try. in the end we paid 5,500 less because the gave us a credit of 1,000 for a repair, and because of all the craziness that went on for months trying to close, they made the repair and we still got the credit!

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i agree.. it depends on the condition of the house and how they have it priced. we bought a house that needs renovating that was listed at $460,000 and we first offered $380,000. we ended up settling at $395,000.

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We first offered $30k under asking and ended up paying full asking price. Was worth every penny as far as we're concerned.

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house started at 519, but dropped to 488 - we offered 450 - there was another offer - ours was cash - we settled on 475 - still got a good deal for the neighborhood and other comps - this was spring of 09

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We closed at 6% less than the house was listed at. To be honest, the listing price was fair for what the house was/is.

ETA our initial offer was 12% off listing...second offer was 8% off listing and we finally settled at 6% off.

Message edited 10/29/2010 11:23:55 AM.

Re: What is the difference between

The difference between asking and our first offer was 34k

They came back and brought it down 10k more.

We came up by 10k.

They came back and said make is 5k more, and you have a deal.

So in the end, they came down 19k and we went up 15k from our first offer.

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we got the house for 50k less than the listing price

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We bought in 2005 at the height of the market.

Our house had been on the market for some time (which at that point was somewhat unusual). They had done two price drops - the first $10000, the second $20000 for a total of $30,000.

Our first offer was $40,000 less than the new price (so a total of 70 less than where they were originally asking).

We ended up paying $20,000 less than the current asking (we met in the middle) and I think we got a great deal at the time.

It is really hard and confusing to come up with an original offer. The one thing that you have to remember is that a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it

Good luck - the worst that they can do is counter your offer if it is too low - and if they think it is way to low, they will usually counter with full asking. In this market I would be surprised if a seller refused to deal with someone because they were offended - it isn't like there is a line of people behind them willing to make an offer!

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we started out 35k below asking... seller was def insulted bc he only came down 2k... and then we got more serious with the bidding to show him we were really interested... we wound up getting the place for 20k below asking