This is some good advice. It depends on your goals for the home! Also, as a Realtor, sometimes working with Foreclosed homes, the listing agents have not seen the home. If it is a new listing sometimes they list it high in the beginning and after a while you will see major price drops. If your working with a good agent, you and the agent can go over figures and determine a fair price for the home. When I submit a low offer compared to the list price I write a short cover letter stating why the offer is so low. I had a property once, where I found out the the home had septic issues and it was a lot money to fix. So based on there initial asking price and the info I found out through the city we got a greatly reduced price on the home. So, you and your agent have to do your homework!

It depends on the location and condition of the property. It may be possible to have the seller escrow some money towards the septic system until it has been used for sixty days and the County Envrionmental Healty Dept can evaluate the system. Please let me know if I may help in any way. Andy Garrow, Coldwell Banker Woodland Schmidt, 616-402-9220. Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hi Katie,

Offering 50% of asking price on a foreclosure is too low. Before entertaining offers of that nature, the selling bank will first lower the asking price 10% or so to try to generate more interest. If the property is over priced, sometimes waiting is the only thing you can do. 10-15% below asking price is the range that has a shot at getting accepted.
I see you have posted this question quite some time ago, so hopefully the asking price has come down quite a bit by now.
Good luck,
Dan.