Hi Emily! This is Kim O'Casey. I am an agent in Syracuse with Keller Williams Syracuse. Have you checked out the new book for first time home buyers, "Your First Home: The Proven Path To Home Ownership". It is a great source of practical info. If you go to: http://www.millionaireagent.com/msys/YFH.html, you should be able to find it. Or, send me an e-mail and I will send you a free copy. I have a ton of info. for first time home buyers. If you would like to have some
e-mailed to you, please let me know. I am happy to send it to you. Good luck! Kim

Hi - I've been looking for a home in the Syracuse/Liverpool area for the past several weeks now. I've made offers on three houses. The sellers of one house wouldn't budge from their asking price. The other two homes had aluminum wiring, which after much research and advice, made me walk away from the houses. I looked on Zillow and on ongov.net to find out the assessed value, taxes and what comparable homes in the area had recently sold for and based my offers somewhere on the low side of the middle. Twenty percent might not be too low an offer, depending on the house and the sellers circumstances. Make sure you make any offer contingent on a home inspection. I'd be really upset if I had found out after the fact that a home I owned had aluminum wiring.

Having a Buyers Agent to advise you on current markets and trends is a good way to make an informed offer. As an experienced Buyers agent I help my clients not to waste time with some offers that sellers will reject without any consideration.

When I work with a seller in pricing a home, we look at the comparable homes in their area, like homes of course, and determine a price depending on the market conditions, as well as their motivation to sell. If they want to priced it too high, for the market, I will suggest they find another Realtor, new ones have a lot of time on their hands to baby sit overpriced homes-my job is to be unemployed as soon as possible. However, that being said, have you asked your Realtor about an FHA 203k mortgage? With that, you can have draws on your mortgage for the repairs you want to do. They will appraise the home at its present value, and also what the value would be with the improvements. If the home is an estate, perhaps the family members can't agree on what they will accept. There can be so many factors as to why a house has been on the market for a longer time than you think it should be, but certainly put in a reasonable offer, based on what your agent has shown you as comparables, and then go from there. You may need to move on to another home. Good luck!

Thanks for the insight. The house went on the market in Oct 07... so that is 7 months which I think is a long time for this area. My understanding is that there has been offers on the house but they must have been contingent on renovations. The house was overpriced to begin with and has dropped 30K since the original listing. The house needs updating.... mostly cosmetic. i really like the house but I cannot afford to pay what they are asking and have enough left over to do the updating that needs to be done.

I’m not sure what’s going on in your market, but in my market (Knoxville, TN) that would be considered a low offer. But always when buying a house, you want to start low, because there is no going down after your offer, it’s only accepted or up from here. If you start to low, people will only think that you’re not a serious buyer. Or, that you are trying to steal the property. My advice is to give a fair offer. You can determine a fair offer, by seeing what the other homes in the area have sold for. Also with any offer, please remember to make it contingent upon appraisal. That will protect you offer if you have over offered on the property. Good luck, and if you have any questions please call 865-776-5777 .

Not my market area but I think many of he same principles hold. First... to me there is no such thing as a low ball offer... they are all starting points. However, many agents and or sellers do not feel that way.

Next how long on the market. An agent or research can help you here. If it has been on the market 90 days and the average in the area is say 180... well you may need to wait awhile. On the otherhand if it has been on the market a really long time there may be some other reason... sllers just wont get reasonable, perhaps it is a short sale, etc. Then what is the condition and how does it stack up against the competition. Again an agent could help you but your research might give you some answers. So if you are coming in low have some good reasons and lay them out... sales comps, time on the market, average sales price vs list price. Finally, a low offe can be made stronger with good terms... inspection terms, size of earnest money, cash? or large down, quick closing, etc. ( strong lenders letter too)

Ask your real estate professional. Your agent can do a comparative market analysis and show you the actual solds in the recent past for any particular property. Then you must weigh the risks of submitting too low of an offer. Some sellers take offense and will not negotiate once a really low offer is received. I counsel my sellers to counter all offers, no matter the first offer.