In the past couple of years, I’ve bought several apartments; on average, I’ve managed to negotiate about 17% off the asking price. The apartments are in Jyväskylä, so there hasn’t been any forced sale situation, nor has the initial price been so high that I would have refrained from making an offer. In practice, the first offer was about 25% below the asking price, and from there, the prices have been negotiated to the right level…
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According to Jukka Rantanen, CEO of Sp-koti, cheap offers are further slowing down the sluggish housing market in the capital region.
As I am not a professional in the field, I don’t understand how it slows down sales if the agent also receives offers that they reject immediately without negotiating. It would be surprising if no one ever had such a compelling need to make a deal that they would
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So you didn’t read that article then. Asking prices are based on realized sales, and new deals are realized a few percent below the asking price, definitely not -20%. Declining localities are a separate matter. Likewise, old detached houses/unrenovated small houses.
Brokers price properties based on sales realized in the last few months, Rantanen says.
However, this does not mean that prices cannot be negotiated. The market price is ultimately what satisfies both the seller and the buyer.
According to a study by Etuovi, which publishes apartment sales listings, sellers are currently willing to come down about five percent on the price of the apartment in the current market situation.
Many looking for their first or a new home are now making offers that are up to 20 percent below the asking prices, Rantanen says.
“That’s not realistic and doesn’t lead to the desired outcome, i.e., sales. On the contrary, sellers often find it outrageous.”
According to Rantanen, price negotiations usually start with a 10–15 percent difference in opinion between the buyer and the seller. The realized sale price is usually a few percent below the asking price.
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I haven’t bought a home in the last couple of years, but during the financial crisis, the best purchase was an offer directly at the asking price (=calling the agent immediately when the property came on the market / immediate departure for a private viewing / an offer at the asking price, valid until the evening). The most annoying property I missed was one for which I offered 500 euros over the asking price at the first viewing. But someone offered more, and for one reason or another, the seller didn’t start a bidding war among potential buyers.
For a couple of properties back then, I made so-called “bold offers,” and counter-offers quickly came in, but despite a seemingly significant discount, the price of the properties ultimately didn’t excite me.
In my experience, in a declining market, the best opportunities come from quickly seizing reasonably priced properties, not by haggling over overpriced properties or trying your luck with “bold offers.”
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You are, of course, absolutely right that the seller must also accept the offer. This previous message of mine lacked the context of several messages I’ve written in this thread, which is easy for me to grasp, but not so much for others.
Many, of course, buy apartments based on different decision-making principles, which means the market price is formed differently than how I think. It is still the market price, fair and square.
I primarily think in terms of return on capital, meaning I compare the rental level of the area and set a required rate of return. I don’t want to buy an apartment below a reasonable return, because the alternative is to put the money into a more likely “correctly” priced stock index. If interest rates and the required rate of return decrease, stock prices rise (ceteris paribus). However, in my opinion, it’s not self-evident that housing prices will rise, because first, the difference between the return and the reasonable required rate of return needs to be closed.
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Whom exactly do these low offers harm? If the seller (or the seller’s agent) is not pleased, the offer can be rejected outright.
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I bought an apartment in Turku early this summer. The first offer was 24% lower than the asking price.
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Great bargaining here 
I myself have bought these three apartments within the last year, all with a similar price reduction. The first offer was around -13%, then after 1-2 counteroffers, we ended up with a 9-11% discount range and closed the deals. (Built between 2017-2021, one from the center of Helsinki and two from the center/near the center of top 5 growth centers). My own feeling was that we were close to the seller’s current lowest selling price, but of course, I cannot know for sure. The asking price was such that in my own calculations, that approx. -10% was a satisfactory purchase price.
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Well, this housing market is a bit like selling Huhtamäki shares on some separate sales platform for 37e a piece, because that’s the true value determined by an expert (inderes). No wonder then that sales aren’t happening when you can get the same thing for 28e on the market.
Well, you don’t get the exact same apartments, of course, but for example, through Kojamo, you can get an ownership share in the same thing with an even bigger discount compared to Etuovi’s asking prices, and then there are plenty of alternative investment opportunities that are even better than Kojamo. Then there’s also the option to rent the apartment.
Brokers’ valuation levels just got stuck at the values boosted by the zero-interest rate era. Gradually, asking prices are approaching the true value at which sales will happen, but there’s still a way to go.
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How cute. When a real estate agent struggles with low offers and in the same breath states something like that, it must be true 
Well, no. Just the same fishing for price increases as all other messages from agents. Real estate deals have always been made anywhere from 20% below the asking price up to the asking price, and always will be.
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– Professional real estate agents know how to price properties coming up for sale realistically and in a way that prices correspond to the current market situation in the area. Agents price properties based on actual sales from the last 3–4 months. There are always well-thought-out reasons for the price.
The CEO of the real estate agency moralizes buyers for too low offers and assures that experts know how to price the property correctly.
And to sellers, the same person says that too high asking prices slow down housing transactions. Apparently, this time, those experts who know how to price properties correctly were not used in the pricing. 
Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a real estate agent wants lower asking prices and higher offers.
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Exactly. Deals are made when the price expectations of the buyer and seller meet. That creates the correct current price level. When an agent gives the seller of a home too rosy a price estimate for the property (in order to get the listing for themselves), and the housing market is already dragging and slow, a 20% valid purchase offer can sound very bad to the seller. According to good brokerage practice, every purchase offer should be presented to the seller. The air is leaking out of the housing bubble. Let’s just calmly wait for the new price level to form.
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A brokerage firm does not have an automatic obligation to even accept an offer.
“A brokerage firm is not obliged to accept all purchase offers. The brokerage firm must accept reasonable purchase offers from the client’s perspective, i.e., those that are sufficiently close to the client’s requirements. A brokerage firm may refuse to accept an offer, for example, when the property for sale is very good, it is the first viewing, and the brokerage firm estimates that it will receive even better offers later. Nor does the brokerage firm need to accept an offer that is significantly worse than a previous offer, whether rejected or still open.”
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If those too low offers don’t even have to be accepted, then apparently real estate transactions are slowed down when brokers’ phone lines and emails are jammed with those making too low offers, and they don’t have time to answer calls from genuine buyers.
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The broker’s work only begins once the purchase offer has been accepted. The purchase offer is presented to the seller, and then a counter-offer is made to the buyer candidate, which is also acceptable to the seller.
A quick look at the current housing market situation. A few years ago, during the “zero-interest era,” housing prices skyrocketed. Almost anyone could get a mortgage (compared to the current situation, banks gave out excessively large mortgages), and this “free money” was transferred to housing prices. Now that loan money has found a normal price level, it will inevitably lower housing prices, and oversized mortgages with their interest rates will erode Finns’ purchasing power in the housing market as well. Housing prices have risen almost continuously since the mid-90s. Unemployment is also rising and is already at a record high. Considering the current market sentiment and economic situation, the price correction for housing will continue.
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In Hesari (paywall) Tuula tells a similar story to many others:
Tuula Törhönen from Vantaa has been trying to sell the detached house she inherited from her parents in Klaukkala, Nurmijärvi, for a year and a half, but there have only been a handful of interested buyers.
The seller finds the offers she has received unreasonable.
”I understand that the situation is bad and it’s difficult to sell in this climate, but it feels bad when people start trying to make a deal with absolutely ridiculous sums.”
Without knowing Nurmijärvi, 190,000 doesn’t seem like a ridiculous sum to me for a detached house in need of renovation. On the other hand, the low offer (and also me) might find Tuula’s original asking price (239k) quite ridiculous, but neither of us has been interviewed by Hesari.
Tuula’s distress is also based on nothing more than an anchoring bias:
Törhönen would thus have had to sell her house for almost 50,000 euros, or over 20 percent, less than she asked. The latest offer feels miserable because Törhönen says she has already had to drop the price by 20,000 euros.
Tuula also has a logical fallacy, as a price drop does not mean the house is not still overpriced:
”Buyers think I have overpriced the property, even though I have come down on the price and the sales listing text and pictures clearly state that there is work to be done.”
Tuula also remembers to blame buyers for responsible financial management:
One potential buyer who submitted an offer justified his request for a price reduction by saying that he would spend 50,000 euros on renovations, Törhönen says.
…
For her part, people can put as much money into renovations as they want, but not everything has to be done at once, Törhönen says.
Hindsight is also evident:
Now Törhönen regrets not selling the house immediately when 190,000 euros was offered for it fresh on the market.
”It sounded like a really low price, and the agent also thought it was a low offer. At that time, I didn’t even start negotiating the price. In retrospect, I certainly should have.”
In a way, it’s surprising how much trust is placed in real estate agents, like gods. The same flaw can be observed in blind trust in analysts’ target prices.
Why would an outsider be able to estimate the price of an apartment better than an ordinary person in this market when hardly any deals are being made? How could an agent’s estimate be any better than a buyer’s, who after all has to pay for the apartment with their own work, and whose interest is considerably stronger than the agent’s? The 50,000 euro price increase Tuula desires costs the buyer roughly 15,000 with current interest rates, so everyone can calculate with their own net hourly wage how much work they have to do so that Tuula doesn’t feel bad. In my case, this means 3340 extra working hours (20 months), so at least I don’t mind the buyer’s distress one bit.
If we also reflect on the facts reported in the news, the house is not currently being sold even for 170,000, so this agent has cost Tuula at least 20,000€ + running costs, and hasn’t even received their commission.
Most surprising is not even starting to negotiate. That’s truly outrageous.
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Certainly so. And in a declining market, the brokers’ professionalism is truly tested, whereas in a rising market, we have all sorts of Jethros and Kaisas basking in their success.
However, above I corrected your erroneous claim regarding making an offer.
It continues where it continues. Areas and apartment sizes are not alike.
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Well said. I am quite puzzled by this campaign started by Hesari (Helsingin Sanomat) to blame buyers. Does anyone (sellers or journalists) really have the idea that the “right” price of an apartment/property is in any way related to the asking price? The seller is allowed to ask, and the buyer is allowed to offer; if these meet, then the price is right. If not, then there’s no point in blaming the other party.
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I get a stronger feeling from that Helsingin Sanomat article that many people indeed bought their apartment after the post-COVID boom, when prices were high. And now, naturally, they are upset about the prices falling, and this is being brought up from different perspectives.
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Exactly. They should be happy if they get any offer, as in most parts of Finland, they might not even get the first one.
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