Buying and Selling Homes - Offer/CounterOffer.... Offer?
 

I am In the process of buying my first home.

we think we have found a home, we have put in an offer on the home and the seller has come back with a counter offer... the initial offer we gave was 8k below what she was asking.... she then counter offered for 4k less then asking price..


We want to give another offer of 6k below asking price, and hope she goes for that or 5k below.... either way..


does this sound feasible, how many times should this go back and forth...


any help and info is greatly appreciated....

Nope. You either take their counter or you dont get it typically. If your local housing market is hot, then you are lucky to get a counter. If the home has been on the market for 2-3 months, then you MIGHT be able to counter.

Depends on how long the house has been on the market and how hot the location is.

If there are other offers your 1-2k savings will look like a waste of money when you lose the house you want and spend another 6 months trying to find another. Time is money. When you are that close don't let the whole process get in the way of your long term happiness.

the house has been on the market for 30 days with no offers

Exactly. When we bought our home we made an offer and the owner countered. The house had been on the market less than a week. We took it even though it was a 2k more than we wanted to pay. And it was good thing we did because there were two other buyers waiting for us to blink.

btw the market is Johnson County..

66061

Johnson County is a hot market that is cooling with the rest of the housing industry. It's still hot but properties are on the market longer than the previous years. It really depends on how attached you are to the house and how long you want to play the game.

I've only bought two houses, but I'd have to agree with this assessment. In my limited experience, if they counter, there may be some room for maneuvering. You might also try to get your closing costs paid for. If you've got a real estate agent, they can give you some insight, but remember the bottom line for them is making a sale.

Do you happen to know how much the property is valued as far as the county goes? If she's way over what the JOCO appraisers office has valued then you might hold off knowing that she's fully aware she's way overpriced her property.

Also, your real estate agent should be able to give you a break down of what properties in the area have sold for and how long they were on the market. This is a good gauge of how hot the area is and if you have time to sit or not.

Had not looked it up til now... her asking price was 143k

Well, she's asking almost 20k more than the county has valued it and it's appraised value rose only 1.45% in 2005. It sounds like maybe she's asking a bit too much.

You should probably check the nearby addresses to see how much they're appraised value increased. It's been my experience that the county is usually pretty close in their valuations. The way to check that would be to compare what the rest of the neighborhood is valued at.

Have you had the property independently appraised yet?

I'm not sure that's a good indicator of how much the house is worth. My house is assessed at $116K, $3000 less than we paid for it in 1999. Of course I'm in a different county in a different state....

As a warning, the assessed prices are often inaccurate by several percent, and if it's undervalued people tend to not appeal it. While it's useful to look up the assessed value, I think it's appropriate to use your judgment based on other homes you're seeing for sale.

However, in a situation like this, it's a good negotiating tool to mention that the assessment is much lower than the asking price.

sorry I looked up the wrong house..

I looked up the one across the street... that is also for sale that we did not like


My Inital offer was 135k

Exactly, it's not the measure of what the house should be worth but A measure. Our independent appraisal ended up being very close to what the country appraised on this property.