Need advice: Buying a house

Soooo, me and FH have recently begun looking for houses again!!! We ended up seeing two on Sunday and three today.

Today, we completely fell in love with one of the homes. The house has everything we are looking for and more. I really, really, really LOVE this house A LOT!!! Alos, there is minimal repairs,if any!!!

Anyways, do you think it's reasonable for a homeowner to accept an offer $100,000 less than what they are asking? I'm thinking $75,000 less is probably a more reasonable reduction.
What are your thoughts and experiences on this? Any tips would be soooo helpful. I'd actually be pretty sad if we lose this house.

you need to check to see how much the house was originally purchased for (you can check that out on nyc.gov) and after that, you need to run a comp analysis on other properties in the neighborhood that are similar to the one you're looking at.

that way, you'll have a better idea if you're lowballing or actually providing an acceptable bid.

keep in mind, when you lowball.. you sometimes may 'insult' the seller... so if you really love this place, i'd do the research

good luck~

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Posted by jwleewedding

you need to check to see how much the house was originally purchased for (you can check that out on nyc.gov) and after that, you need to run a comp analysis on other properties in the neighborhood that are similar to the one you're looking at.

that way, you'll have a better idea if you're lowballing or actually providing an acceptable bid.

keep in mind, when you lowball.. you sometimes may 'insult' the seller... so if you really love this place, i'd do the research

good luck~

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ita

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Posted by jwleewedding

you need to check to see how much the house was originally purchased for (you can check that out on nyc.gov) and after that, you need to run a comp analysis on other properties in the neighborhood that are similar to the one you're looking at.

that way, you'll have a better idea if you're lowballing or actually providing an acceptable bid.

keep in mind, when you lowball.. you sometimes may 'insult' the seller... so if you really love this place, i'd do the research

good luck~

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Honestly, I do think we are absolutely lowballing it! FH is trying to get the best deal possible, but when we looked up the house and it's history and what the price value was compared to other homes in the area- it was actually only about 10K cheaper.

The backyard can use a little fixing, but other than that I really cannot see anything else that could bring the price down. This house was maintained in such excellent condition.

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Posted by jwleewedding

you need to check to see how much the house was originally purchased for (you can check that out on nyc.gov) and after that, you need to run a comp analysis on other properties in the neighborhood that are similar to the one you're looking at.

that way, you'll have a better idea if you're lowballing or actually providing an acceptable bid.

keep in mind, when you lowball.. you sometimes may 'insult' the seller... so if you really love this place, i'd do the research

good luck~

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I agree with this. Look at trulia.com too. If you love the house, i'd be wary of offending the seller as well since they will be less likely to offer even a counteroffer if you completely lowball them.

IMO 100,000 is completely too much of a price reduction unless you are talking million dollar homes. When we were looking for houses, we never considered going less than 50,000 max. I don't know about the area you are looking but the neighborhood we wanted (livingston, nj) the houses were still in demand and not selling far below the asking price.

It all depends on the region, how long its been sitting on the market, and how motivated the seller is.

good luck

Hey! We are currently in contract so I recently went throguh this. You have to be careful with your first offer bc u want them to take you seriously. I personally think 100k is too low. (Although it does depend on what % of the asking price that is) I think 75k is more reasonable but still vry low- most likely the seller will come down 25k but more than that is hard to say.(U never know what their situation is, maybe they bought another house and are in a rush to sell?!) But what do u have to lose? Just make sure u know where ur willing to cap your offer and keep in mind that whatever u offer they will counteroffer a much higher price, hopefully u will be able to meet in the middle somewhere.

HTH!

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Posted by FFsBride

Hey! We are currently in contract so I recently went throguh this. You have to be careful with your first offer bc u want them to take you seriously. I personally think 100k is too low. (Although it does depend on what % of the asking price that is) I think 75k is more reasonable but still vry low- most likely the seller will come down 25k but more than that is hard to say.(U never know what their situation is, maybe they bought another house and are in a rush to sell?!) But what do u have to lose? Just make sure u know where ur willing to cap your offer and keep in mind that whatever u offer they will counteroffer a much higher price, hopefully u will be able to meet in the middle somewhere.

HTH!

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I wish I could read the seller's mind! There's no way I would accept a 100K reduction on this house if I were the owner. The owners already moved out for the most part. There are still a few boxes scattered around the house. Not sure how eager they are to sell. Our agent is going to find out for us. I really hope it works out.

Did you have that 'this is it' feeling? How many houses did you look at before you purchased your home?

We looked at only about 6 houses maybe. And there was another house we almost put an offer on but when I brought my dad to see it he found all sorts of problems that i would have never known about. With this house, we did have that 'this is it' feeling. I think its mostly bc like your house, its in move-in condition and the owner has kept it so well that we could just see ourselves living there. Its so much better to know that we don't need to do aything more than paint (if that) when we move in. But we contemplated our asking price too and wound up with an initial offer of 55k lower than the selling price which was still probably a little low thinking back now, but we went back and forth for a while. In the end seller came down 20k and we went up from our original offer by 40k so hopefully that gives u a better idea. But every case will be different!

Let me know if u have any other questions! Let us know what happens and good luck!

ITA with all the prior posters; 100K is too much of a reduction; I highly doubt they'll accept your offer and they might get a little offended. We bought our house 2 years ago and offered 40K less then what they were asking & they accepted! I think stick between 50-75 and you'll be able to negotiate. Maybe ask for help w/closing costs or something. But they're not going to just give the house away; they still need to recoup their own costs and they probably want to make a little bit of a proft in the process.

GOOD LUCK!

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Posted by cc2011

Did you have that 'this is it' feeling? How many houses did you look at before you purchased your home?

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We looked from may 09 to oct 09! Looked at lots of houses and once we knew the neighborhood we wanted, it was just a waiting game to see what popped up in our price range and our requirements. I know they say we're in a real estate slump but some areas are not so affected. There were multiple bidders on the house we closed on and we actually went a little above the asking price.

We def had a 'this is our house!' moment. We were on our way to close on a diff house actually and stopped to see this one as a last look and I had a completely diff feeling about it.

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Posted by mybabylovesmoi

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Posted by cc2011

Did you have that 'this is it' feeling? How many houses did you look at before you purchased your home?

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We looked from may 09 to oct 09! Looked at lots of houses and once we knew the neighborhood we wanted, it was just a waiting game to see what popped up in our price range and our requirements. I know they say we're in a real estate slump but some areas are not so affected. There were multiple bidders on the house we closed on and we actually went a little above the asking price.

We def had a 'this is our house!' moment. We were on our way to close on a diff house actually and stopped to see this one as a last look and I had a completely diff feeling about it.

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We looked for close to a year before i found a place that i loved and then i knew it, 'this is it'.. same feeling i got when i went to look at RH's!

just tread carefully, the hard part about dealing with a place you love is finding the right price...but 75-100k def is a lot, esp if you aren't dealing with a home that is a million+. most people are willing to only move in 20-30k increments.

HTH

I'm sort of in the same situation. Been doing this for a few months now and trying to play the market.

One thing I would do is CONSTANTLY follow houses on the online sites. My favorite is ziprealty, but it requires signing up. It's free, though. You can look up multiple towns at a time and save your searches easily. You can also sign up for e-mail updates so you're notified immediately on when a price is reduced. You start to get a feel for neighborhoods. You start to see houses that are literally a block from your desired house that sells for far less or far more than the house you like. This gives you the knowledge to give an educated offer.

Redfin has an easy-to-use search engine where you can search for homes sold in the area. I've used Trulia, and I feel that it isn't the most up to date.

The general rule for giving an offer is 10% lower than asking, and that's if you want to play a game and lowball as much as possible. If you really want to get IN the game, 6% is a good percentage. Again, this all has to do with your research and what you've seen. Unless you're looking at a $1million home, going $100,000 lower than asking is a bit of a stretch.

i've never bought a house before but i would imagine that you would get 'this is it feeling'
and 100K is too low.
i work as a real estate para and ig my client told me that someone offered 100K less iw ould laugh and tell him to move on.

don't go lower than 25K, but do the research and see what other homes in the area are going for, your broker, if you have one, should be helping you with this and giving you comparables.

good luck!!!