How to Know If a Seller Will Take Less for a House

Just because a seller is motivated doesn't mean they're willing to take less for their house, and this is where a lot of buyers get it wrong. They see a house that's been sitting for 60 or 90 days, maybe it's vacant, maybe the price has already been reduced a couple of times, and immediately they think, offer them $100,000 less. Maybe that works, but there's a difference between a seller who needs to sell and a seller who's actually ready to accept less. There are specific things I look at that give me a pretty good idea of whether there's actually room in the price, and a lot of times you can figure this out before you ever write the offer.

How the Price History Was Reduced

The pattern behind a price reduction tells me more than the reduction itself. A house that came on at a million dollars, dropped to $975,000 three weeks later, then $950,000, then $925,000, tells me something very different than a seller who listed at a million six months ago and hasn't moved once. The first seller has already shown me they're willing to move, even if that doesn't mean they'll take $850,000 or $750,000. Every reduction is their expectations shifting a little further from where they started.

Timing matters too. If they reduced the price yesterday, they probably want to give that new number some time before considering anything lower. If they reduced it three weeks ago and it's still sitting, I'm calling the listing agent and asking what it would take to get something done. Sometimes they'll say the seller isn't moving another dollar, and that's information too, but often the answer gives you a pretty good read on where things actually stand.

What the Comps Actually Support

Just because a seller might take less doesn't mean my buyer should throw a random number at them. I want to know what the house is actually worth, the same closed-comp work behind figuring out if any house is overpriced in the first place. If they're listed at a million and the three best comparable sales support $940,000 to $950,000, now I have something to work with. I can call the listing agent and lay out the comps directly: this one sold for $945,000, the one down the street for $950,000, one with a remodeled kitchen for $955,000, and ask them to help me understand how they got to a million.

I'm not telling them they're overpriced or that their listing is bad, since that accomplishes nothing. There's a good chance the listing agent already suspects the price is too high and has already had that conversation with their own client. What I'm doing is giving that agent hard numbers they can take straight back to their seller, backed by actual closed sales instead of an opinion. That's a very different conversation than writing $50,000 under asking and hoping it sticks, and it gives the listing agent a reason to advocate for the offer instead of delivering a lowball number their seller will dismiss.

Whether They've Already Turned Down an Offer

If a house has been sitting, I'll usually ask the listing agent whether they've had any activity. Sometimes they'll say yes, there was an offer a few weeks back that the seller wasn't ready to accept. If a home listed at $950,000 had an offer at $925,000 a month ago that got rejected, I want to know how the seller feels about $925,000 today. A month ago they might have believed another buyer, or full price, was right around the corner. Now they've made another mortgage payment and sat through another month of showings with nothing else coming in. That $925,000 they turned down might look a lot better today. In my experience, the first offer a seller receives is often one of the better ones they'll get, so figuring out where that earlier offer landed helps determine where to come in now.

Is There a Real Deadline?

I talked about reading a motivated seller in an earlier video, and the same idea applies here: we'd like to sell and we need this closed by a specific date are two completely different situations. Maybe they're relocating, already bought another house, or need this sale to close on an investment property by year end. If there's a real deadline, every passing day matters a little more to them, but that doesn't mean hammering on price is the best move. If they need a 21-day close and my buyer can deliver it, maybe we give them that timeline in exchange for $15,000 toward closing costs or a rate buydown. Or maybe we come in $20,000 under asking with a clean offer and strong financing that solves their timing problem. Either way, the seller has to decide whether to hold out for more or take the buyer sitting in front of them.

Is It the Seller, or Is It the House?

Sometimes the reason a seller will take less has nothing to do with their situation and everything to do with the house. A busy street, a kitchen untouched in 30 years, a roof that needs replacing, an awkward floor plan. If buyer after buyer walks through with the same objection, the seller may eventually have to accept that the problem is price, not the buyers. There's a real difference between a problem you can fix and one you can't. A roof or $30,000 of updating can be priced with cost-of-cure math. A house backing to a freeway can't be moved, and whoever buys it will face the same objection when they eventually sell. That doesn't mean don't buy it, it means buy it at a price that accounts for what won't change.

What the Listing Agent's Wording Tells You

Once numbers start getting discussed, I listen closely to how the listing agent responds, because this is often where I get the most useful information in the whole process. If I ask how firm they are on price and the agent says, write something, that doesn't tell me the exact number, but it tells me enough to keep asking. If they say something in the low $900s would get a conversation started, we're getting somewhere. If they say just put something together and let me work on them, I'm paying attention, because the listing agent knows their seller better than I do. They've been having conversations with that seller every week, they know whether the seller is frustrated, nervous, or regretting a rejected offer, and when they say something like that, they're essentially asking for material they can bring back to their own client. On the other hand, if they tell me not to waste my time because the seller won't take anything less than a specific number, that's information too, whether it's true or a bluff meant to hold the line.

Putting It Together

If the house has been sitting, the price has been reduced twice, the comps support a lower number, a prior offer was rejected a month ago, and the listing agent is telling me to write something, that's a pretty good spot to be negotiating from. But the goal isn't to see how low an offer I can write, it's to get my buyer the best deal that's actually achievable. Some buyers think negotiating just means starting as low as humanly possible and meeting somewhere in the middle. Sometimes that works, and sometimes a seller simply won't counter at all. If I think there's $30,000 of room, I don't need to offer $100,000 under asking, I might come in $40,000 to $50,000 low and see what happens, backed by comps and a real understanding of the seller's situation, with financing solid enough that the seller has no reason to doubt the deal will close.

Nobody knows exactly what a seller will accept before an offer is written, and anyone who claims they do is guessing. All you can do is gather as much information as possible: how the price has moved, what the comps say, whether there have been prior offers, whether there's a deadline, whether something about the house keeps getting rejected, and what the listing agent is telling you. Any one of those alone might mean nothing, but three or four together usually means there's real room to negotiate, and then it becomes about figuring out how aggressive you can actually be without blowing up the deal entirely. Getting a home $25,000 under asking is great, and so is a $15,000 closing cost credit or a seller-funded rate buydown, but none of it matters if the house itself isn't the right one just because the number felt like a deal.