When can you make a low offer? - Virginia Beach Neighborhoods

Most people assume that the listed price is negotiable when a home is for sale. But how negotiable? Will a buyer accept an offer $20,000 below asking price? How about $30,000? Here’s the answer!It depends. (This is not a cop out answer)

Let’s be realistic. Every person is different. Every house is different. Every neighborhood is different. As a result, every deal will be different. Here are some stories that will help you understand how a deal can progress. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

First a happy story. Eugene and Gertrude wanted to sell their home in a neighborhood where similar houses were listed for $350,000 and up. Unbeknownst to them, the sale prices of similar homes were around $330,000. List prices are easily found online. It takes more effort to find the sale prices and the city tax records often lag by months. I convinced them that the market value of their home was about $330,000 and that we should list it at market value. They agreed. Within three or four days we received several offers. This was less than a year ago, by the way, so getting multiple offers was not common.

The first offer was for $290,000. To make a long story short, they came all the way up and above the asking price of $229,000. This just goes to show that if a home is priced right, the asking price can be a very fair deal for both sides.

Could they have gotten more if they had asked for more? In this case the answer is no. The appraisal came back at $331,000 and the contract purchase price was $333,000. We had to adjust the contract price down to meet the appraisal.