How to handle a lowball offer
You are the seller, the offer is well under your asking price, and the first useful thing to know is that almost every low offer is an opening position with reasoning behind it that has not been shown to you. So respond - do not refuse, and do not answer today. Ask the buyer's agent in writing what the number is based on. Then counter, with your own reasoning attached, and be willing to move on terms as well as price. Refusing to engage ends the only negotiation currently in front of you. Countering with evidence is what moves the number, and low offers move more often than sellers expect.
The rest of this page is about how to make that counter land: where buyers actually get their number, how to reconstruct their case before an offer ever arrives, and how to tell the difference between an offer that is testing you and an offer that is telling you the truth.
First, is it actually a lowball?
Below asking is not the same as lowball. An offer a few percent under list, with clean terms and a strong buyer, is a normal opening and probably a good one. What people mean by lowball is an offer far enough below your evidence that the gap cannot be closed by ordinary give and take.
The measurement that matters is not the gap to your list price. It is the gap to the range your comparable evidence actually supports. If your asking price sits at the top of a defensible range and the offer sits just under the bottom of it, you are perhaps eight percent apart on evidence while feeling twenty percent apart on price. That is a very different negotiation, and you cannot see which one you are in without the comparable set in front of you. If you have not had that conversation yet, it belongs in a walkthrough valuation rather than in your head at eleven at night.
Where the buyer's number came from
Low offers are rarely random. They usually come from one of these, and often from several at once. Knowing which one you are looking at determines what your counter has to answer.
Their budget rather than your house
The most common and least insulting reason. The buyer loves the house and cannot reach your price, so they offer what they can and hope. There is nothing to argue with here, because the number is not a statement about your house at all. What you are testing in the counter is whether there is anything above their opening left in the tank, and whether they can actually close.
A comparable set assembled to support a conclusion
Comparables are not a fact, they are a selection. A buyer's agent who wants to justify a low number will lean on the sales that make your house look expensive: the one that needed work, the one on the busier street, the one with less finished space, the smaller floor plan, the sale that closed under unusual circumstances. None of that is dishonest - it is advocacy, and it is their job. But it is answerable, because every comparable they use has features yours does not and omits ones yours has.
Condition, priced as a discount rather than a repair
A dated kitchen becomes "needs a full renovation." A roof with some life left becomes "needs replacing." The move here is to convert a specific, bounded item into an open-ended allowance, and the size of the allowance is usually several times the cost of the actual work. This is the single most effective lever buyers use and the easiest one to answer, because contractors give numbers.
How long you have been sitting
Days on market is public, and it gets read as a signal about you rather than about the market. Past a certain point buyers stop asking what the house is worth and start asking what you will now take. That is why the market-response question matters so much in the first two weeks, and it is covered separately in reading the market's response.
What they believe about your situation
An empty house, a listing that mentions relocation, an estate, a lockbox that shows nobody has been through in weeks - each of these gets read as motivation. Some of it you can control and some you cannot, but you should assume the buyer has formed a theory about why you are selling and is pricing it.
A deliberate test
Some buyers make low offers as a matter of policy on everything they see, expecting most to be rejected and a few to be accepted. There is no analysis behind it. You find this one out by asking for the support and getting nothing back.
| Where it came from | What it is really about | How you answer it |
|---|---|---|
| Their budget rather than your house | The buyer loves the house and cannot reach your price, so they offer what they can and hope. The number is not a statement about your house at all. | There is nothing to argue with. What the counter tests is whether there is anything above their opening left in the tank, and whether they can actually close. |
| A comparable set assembled to support a conclusion | Comparables are not a fact, they are a selection. The sales that make your house look expensive: the one that needed work, the one on the busier street, the one with less finished space. | It is answerable, because every comparable they use has features yours does not and omits ones yours has. |
| Condition, priced as a discount rather than a repair | A specific, bounded item converted into an open-ended allowance, usually several times the cost of the actual work. The single most effective lever buyers use. | The easiest one to answer, because contractors give numbers. |
| How long you have been sitting | Days on market is public, and it gets read as a signal about you rather than about the market. Past a certain point buyers stop asking what the house is worth and start asking what you will now take. | - |
| What they believe about your situation | An empty house, a listing that mentions relocation, an estate, a lockbox that shows nobody has been through in weeks. Each of these gets read as motivation. | - |
| A deliberate test | Some buyers make low offers as a matter of policy on everything they see, expecting most to be rejected and a few to be accepted. There is no analysis behind it. | You find this one out by asking for the support and getting nothing back. |
A dash means this page does not state an answer the counter can make to that source.
What not to do
- Do not refuse to respond. A non-response ends the conversation and tells you nothing. Even a counter at close to your list price keeps it alive and forces the buyer to reveal whether they were serious.
- Do not respond the same day, angry. The offer is a business proposal about an asset. It is not a review of your housekeeping or your taste, even when it is phrased in a way that makes it feel like one.
- Do not explain your situation. Anything you say about why you are selling, when you have to be out, or what you owe becomes a negotiating input. Your agent can convey firmness without conveying urgency.
- Do not drop your list price because of one offer. A price reduction is a response to the market, not to a person. One low offer is a data point of one. Six showings and no offers is a market signal; those are different situations.
- Do not counter without reasoning. A counter that is just a smaller number invites another smaller number. A counter with evidence attached changes what the next number is based on.
Ask for the support - in writing
Before countering, have your agent ask the buyer's agent for the basis of the offer: which sales they used, what condition adjustments they applied, and what they are assuming about the property. Sometimes you get a real analysis you can engage with. Sometimes you get silence, which tells you it was a test. And occasionally you learn something you did not know - a comparable you had not seen, or something about your house that you have stopped noticing. Asking also changes the frame, from "the seller was offended" to "the seller wants to see the analysis," which is a much stronger place to counter from.
The preparation that actually wins this: build their case first
Most advice about low offers is reactive - counter with a CMA, hold firm, know your bottom line. The problem is that by the time the offer is on the table you have days at most, and you are assembling your defense under pressure while the buyer's agent has already assembled their attack at leisure.
The better method inverts that, and it happens before the house is listed. It is a structured exercise in arguing against your own house: take the same public materials the buyer's agent will have, build the strongest honest case for a lower number, and then prepare the evidence that answers each line of it. Done properly it produces a written file that sits ready, so the counter goes out in hours rather than days and it goes out with support already attached.
Reconstruct the comparable set they will use
Work out which sales a buyer's agent would reach for to argue your house is over-priced, and what each of those sales lets them claim. Then, for each one, establish the specific, documentable reason it is not a fair comparison to yours - finish level, finished lower-level space, garage, lot, what it backs onto, what condition it transferred in. You are not hiding those sales. You are making sure that when they appear in an offer, the answer already exists and is specific.
Price your own defects before someone else does
Walk the house looking for every item a buyer could turn into an allowance, and get a real number for each: a contractor quote, a service record, a manufacturer's date plate on the furnace. A written quote for a bounded repair is the cleanest possible answer to an open-ended discount demand, and it converts an argument about feelings into an argument about arithmetic - which is an argument you can win.
Know what your evidence will not support
The other half of the exercise, and the half that gets skipped. Somewhere in the buyer's case there is usually one point that is simply correct. Find it before they do, decide in advance what you will concede on it and what you want in return, and you will never be negotiating that item for the first time in a live counter.
Decide your terms currency in advance
Price is one variable of six or seven. Closing date, possession after closing, what stays with the house, the size and release timing of earnest money, the inspection scope, and how the offer handles a low appraisal are all things a buyer values and some cost you very little. Knowing which of them you would trade, and at what price, is what lets you counter above the buyer's expectation and still give them a reason to say yes.
What the counter should contain
A counter that moves a low offer usually has four parts: a price supported by named comparables rather than by your list price; a specific answer to each condition claim, with numbers; at least one term that gives the buyer something they wanted; and a response deadline short enough to keep momentum without looking panicked. If the buyer's financing is thin or their preapproval is vague, add a request for stronger evidence of funds - a low offer with weak financing is two problems, not one, and comparing offers properly means pricing that risk rather than ignoring it.
When the low offer is telling you the truth
Here is the part most pages will not say. If you have had real showing traffic and the only offers arriving are low, and they are low for the same reason, the offers are not an insult. They are the market reporting back, and they are more reliable than any pre-listing opinion including a good one. Three independent buyers pricing the same defect the same way is evidence. At that point the useful question stops being how to defeat the offer and becomes whether to fix the thing, reprice around it, or take the best of what is in front of you. Sellers who spend two more months proving the market wrong generally end up under the number they refused.
One local wrinkle worth knowing
Neither Missouri nor Kansas requires a statutory seller's disclosure form the way many states do - the practice here is driven by contract and by custom rather than by statute. One consequence for negotiation is that a buyer's condition case is usually built from their own inspector after they are under contract, not from a disclosure form before. That is an argument for putting your own documentation in front of them early: what you know, what you have fixed, and what a quote says the rest would cost. If you are already past inspection and a repair demand has replaced the price argument, that is a different negotiation, covered in the contract-to-closing timeline.
If you decide to let it go
Sometimes the right answer is a polite decline. Do it in a way that leaves the door open: a counter at or near list is a decline that still allows the buyer to come back, and buyers do come back, sometimes weeks later. What you should not do is close the door in a way that makes returning awkward. The person who offered low on your house in week two is often the person who buys it in week nine.
Get the case built before you list
If your house is not on the market yet, the whole of the preparation described above can be done in advance, and it is far easier to do calmly than under a forty-eight hour response deadline. To talk it through for a Kansas City or Northland home, call (816) 258-7356 or email Nataliya@NataliyaSells.com. Related reading: pricing a Kansas City home, preparing your home for market, and the current open-house map, which is a fast way to see what a buyer is walking through on the same Sunday as your house.
Questions sellers ask
Should I be insulted by this offer, or is it worth countering?
Counter it. The offer is a business position, not an opinion about you, and the only thing a non-response guarantees is that nothing further happens. Countering costs you a signature and a few hours, and it forces the buyer to show whether there was anything above their opening number. The feeling of being insulted is usually a reaction to the gap against your list price rather than against your evidence, and those two gaps are often very different sizes. Look at the evidence gap before you decide how you feel about it.
If I counter at full price, am I wasting everyone's time?
Not necessarily, but a counter at exactly your list price does communicate that you are not negotiating, and some buyers will read it as a door closing. A more productive version keeps your price essentially intact while conceding something that costs you little, such as a closing date they wanted or an item of personal property. That says the price is supported without saying the conversation is over. If you genuinely will not move at all, say so clearly rather than through the shape of a counter.
How much below asking is a normal offer versus a lowball?
There is no universal percentage, and any page that gives you one is guessing at your market and your list price. The number that matters is the gap between the offer and the range your comparable evidence supports, not the gap to whatever you happened to list at. A house priced above its evidence will receive offers that look like lowballs and are actually reasonable. A house priced at its evidence and receiving offers far below it is looking at either a condition problem, an exposure problem, or a buyer with no analysis behind them.
Can I just tell the buyer to come back when they are serious?
You can, and you will lose the option. Buyers who get that answer generally do not return, because returning means conceding publicly that they were not serious. A counter achieves everything a dismissal achieves while keeping the negotiation alive and putting the burden of the next move on them. Even a small movement from your side, paired with a request for the analysis behind their number, is more likely to produce a real second offer than any version of telling them to try again.
The buyer wants a huge credit for the kitchen. How do I answer that?
With numbers. Ask what the credit is based on and then answer it with real quotes for the specific work. A dated kitchen is a legitimate reason for a buyer to pay less than they would for a renovated one; it is not a license to price a full remodel and deduct it from your offer. Getting two written estimates before you list is one of the cheapest pieces of negotiating preparation available, because it turns an open-ended demand into a bounded and arguable figure that you brought to the table first.
Should I tell the buyer I have another offer coming?
Only if it is true. Bluffing about competing interest is a fast way to lose a real buyer, and the REALTOR Code of Ethics allows a listing agent to disclose the existence of offers only with the seller's approval, which means the disclosure carries weight precisely because it is not made casually. If a second offer genuinely exists, saying so is a strong and legitimate move. If it does not, the downside of being caught is that the buyer you had walks and you have taught their agent not to believe you next time.
We are two weeks in and the only offer is low. Do I reprice?
Not on the strength of one offer. Look at the traffic first. If showings have been steady and only one buyer wrote, that is a value-in-person problem and one data point. If showings have been scarce, the offer is not really the signal at all and the exposure or price problem came first. A reduction made in response to a single buyer often gives away more than the buyer was asking for. Diagnose the traffic, then decide, and make any reduction large enough to reach a new set of buyers rather than a token one.