46erjoe wrote:
All things being equal, how much should a prospective home buyer offer
to a home seller. If I go too far below the asking price, I could
insult the seller and he won't want to deal with me again. If I go too
near the seller's asking price, I stant to lose a lot of money. Any
general rule of thumb?

1% less, 5% 10% ?????

My experience buying this time of year was that it tends to be a buyers
market, especially if you're buying where it's cold. You may be able
to go pretty low if there's not much interest in the house. See if you
can figure out if other people are interested. Don't trust your agent
on this point. They want the sale and will try to stampede you into
bidding high. Try calling the selling agent's office and chatting up
the agent's secretary, without revealing who you are. We offered about
5% less than the asking price, and ended up splitting the difference,
in a market (DC) where coming in low is very unusual. (It was at the
time anyway.) My sense of it is they priced the house as if it wasn't
a dead time of year and hoped for the best, but it didn't work for
them.

Good luck.

ccs ikyr