KK, There is really no formula for gaging how much to offer a seller. The best suggestion that I can give you is to look at many properties in your price range, you will learn which ones are priced properly and which are not. You can then make an offer based on your experience. I would be pleased to help you find the perfect home for you, and/or sell your current property. I will hope to hear from you, Sue DeHaven, Weidel Realtors, 609-737-1500 ext.231 or sdehaven@weidel.com

Hi ya,

The simple answer to your question is to look at the list price to sales price ratio for the entire area through the MLS statistics. This may give you a rule of thumb, however - the averages can't give you the answer. For example, the average temperature between freezing and boiling doesn't really give you the right answer about either freezing or boiling..

You need to look at each property individually rather that just assume a blanket formula for reduction in price. Unlike the owner of a business selling inventory, each broker represents a different seller. These sellers have different motivations, urgency and pricing objectives.

Some Sellers price their properties very close to the price that they will sell to attract more offers. Other Sellers will throw some number out there in the hopes that some fool will come along and pay the price they are asking.

The best thing to do is to either research this information yourself or better yet, hire a good buyers agent who can help you negotiate the best deal for you. They should be able to find out the Seller's motivation, urgency, mortgage balance, recorded liens, closing costs, when they bought the property and the original price they paid. Once you have all this information, you can try to get into the mind of the Seller to see what price they are able to sell the property and then make an offer to them that is attractive enough for them to accept.

By obtaining this type of information, you will be able to see which Sellers are in the best position to sell their homes for the price you'd like to pay them. That's not saying they will sell at your price, but you definitely increase your odds.

Lenore, there is no "formula" about what percentage of a listing price to offer.

Knowing what to offer comes from many places.
* Understanding the true-value of the home based on comps and CMAs
* Knowledge of what your desired target price is
* Understanding the climate of the current market
* An awareness of the list/sale ratio of recent comparable sales
* Negotiating skill (not to put too fine a point on it, but it's much easier to know what to offer, when you'd negotiated for homes before... the more successful times, the better, and you can get a "feel" for the seller, and figure out how they might respond by "profiling" and getting into their mind)
* ... and other intangibles.

As you can see, coming up with that starting point, is a compilation of lots of different things, all coming together to build that price.