patrick.net

leo9 says

Did anyone have similar experience ?

Isn't that how it's always been?

You should NEVER offer the asking price.

Go to a county assessor website for your area. Look up the price the house sold for before. This helps you determine if this is a flip. You will often find in our area things like sold for 300, on the market for 450 and sitting. Lets you know what you can negotiate back down to. Sometimes a seller is upside down, that is however not your problem.

After that simply compare salaries of people in the neighborhood. If average salary x3 does not come close enough to the value its not worth it. (Do subtract needed repairs if the house is old from the house value).

Offer what you believe you are comfortable with and makes sense. I've seen people ask for 600's in our neighborhood when houses in the area go for low 300's, high 200's. So asking price often times has little to do with what it is actually worth, especially lately when some still look for big time emotional suckers.

FYI:
The reason they price it too high, is because they expect negotiations. Most people will negotiate down a little bit, but they won't actually research the price and offer a lot less. This gives brokers room to wiggle. They can always reduce the price down bit by bit until they find a sucker that buys. Its a really sleazy auction type of system designed to screw the average person into overpaying for a wooden box.

ChrisLA says

After that simply compare salaries of people in the neighborhood. If average salary x3 does not come close enough to the value its not worth it. (Do subtract needed repairs if the house is old from the house value).

Where is this posting of people's salaries in a neighborhood? Census figures are generally for a whole city, and not very current. Do you go door to door and ask?