What constitutes a "lowball" offer? and thoughts on negotiation strategies...

[Anonymous]

We're putting in an offer that would net the seller 90% of asking price. It's been on the market 3 months and they've come down slightly over that time.
Would you consider this a lowball offer? It's not in DC, fwiw. Outer outer suburbs in MD where homes are not as hot as we are seeing in the metro DC area.

Our realtor has essentially said we are being unrealistic, but we are interested in getting the best price on the house and entering serious negotiations, so I feel that this is one way to test their motivation. My thought is if they say "no way" then we can come back higher, so it doesn't hurt to start low. If we lose out this house, it wouldn't kill me (so I guess you could say I am not a "highly motivated" buyer). I am very interested in making sure we don't overpay on another house again. I learned that lesson in 2006.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Where in MD? If is not in a popular location plus the 3 months on the market, why not, make an offer and counter back. I think you need to hire another agent instead

[Anonymous]

Make the offer you want and see what happens. If I were the seller I would just counter what I want. I doubt they will just walk if the house has been on the market for three months.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Ultimately our agent will do what we want. He was sharing his opinion, which I asked for, then I explained why I disagreed. But it did make me second guess myself. It's in Arundel.

[Anonymous]

It's a little subjective. 90% of 100,000 is $90,000, which isn't too too bad. But 90% of 500,000 is $450,000. That seems like a lot.

On the other hand, we low balled every offer we made and got rejected every time (with no counter offers) but this last time and we ended up getting the house. If you're willing to walk away from it, then I say go for it. Be prepared for a counteroffer and have a clear idea in your head about what you're willing to counter with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Ultimately our agent will do what we want. He was sharing his opinion, which I asked for, then I explained why I disagreed. But it did make me second guess myself. It's in Arundel.

Go ahead and do it. However, once, I saw a house been on the market for about a month, then we made an offer, that son of b!tch verbally agreed that he accepted the offer, but then he sold it to somebody else without even counter back.

There was another one, we put in an offer slightly less the asking price with 3% back, they sold it without counter back, so good luck!

We are still looking!