Offering 15% under ask on a farmette that’s been sitting for 2+ years. Would you take this if you were the seller?

Mods, since you removed my last post. Here is one I hand-typed myself. Let me know if this is okay. I could also type it up on a type writer or hand write it with a pen and paper and re-post that.

Looking for a sanity check from anyone who’s bought or sold rural-ish property, especially in the Midwest.

My wife and I are trying to buy a 5 acre place in the far west Chicago burbs. 1999 cape cod, about 2500 sq ft of actual living space, though it’s been marketed at 3500 because they count a detached building that was permitted as a “game room” back in 2003 and later got a kitchen stuck in it. Barn, chickens, a hoop greenhouse that’s basically a skeleton now. Interior is all original 1999. Pet damage, original water heater, upstairs AC is dead. Roof and main furnace/AC are new though (2024/2025).

It first listed in Aug 2024 at $830k. It’s been listed 5 separate times since then and is now FSBO at $774,900. Two contracts fell apart. The seller says both were financing but I’d bet money it was appraisal, since the square footage thing is pretty obvious once an appraiser measures it. Not confirmed, just my guess.

Here’s what we did that I haven’t seen a lot of people do. I asked the seller if she’d let me pay for an appraisal before making an offer, with the understanding I could share it with her. She said yes. I hired an SRA who does a lot of acreage work out here, paid the $850, and it came back at $695k as-is. He measured it ANSI, put the GLA at bout 2300, and valued the detached building and the unheated upstairs separately instead of counting them as living area.

The other wrinkle: there’s an old clay ag drain tile running under the property that’s failing. This is in the county’s public records, they’ve been trying to get it fixed for a couple years, and the county’s drainage engineer has a written estimate of about $40k for the owner’s portion. The appraiser noted the standing water but didn’t assign a repair cost because he couldn’t determine responsibility.

So the offfer is $655k. That’s $695k minus the $40k. I attached the appraisal. I’ve got an underwritten pre-approval already, 10% down conventional, no buyer’s agent (and I pointed out to her that she’s not paying a buyer side commission because of that, which is real money), not contingent on selling our current house, $10k earnest, we’ll take it as-is with just an inspection contingency, she can pick her closing date, no rent back. The one thing I asked for was that she remove a tree hanging over the roof, which she had already offered to do. There’s also about $15k of yard drainage cleanup that I told her Im eating.

I’m expecting her to counter. I’d go to maybe $660k. I’m not going to $700k for a house that needs $100k+ of work and has no basement.

Questions:

- Is 15% under ask too aggressive when the ask has been sitting for 27 months and I’ve got an appraisal she agreed to? Or is it just... what the house is worth?

- If you were her, does the “sure thing” package (financing done, no agent, no sale contingency, fast close) actually matter, or do sellers like this just keep waiting for the mythical cash buyer?

- Has anyone done the shared pre-offer appraisal thing? Did the seller actually respect it or did she just ignore it when the number came back low?

submitted by /u/mlee0000
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1xdeg02/offering_15_under_ask_on_a_farmette_thats_been/