On Lowballs, & Current List-to-Sale Price Trends

This post talks about some of the issues around writing low-priced offers, and then at the bottom of the page I've posted some hard data that is relevant to the Nanaimo real estate market during this spring of 2025.

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Let's face it – everyone wants the lowest possible price when they buy property, and it's their real estate agent's job to help make that happen.

But this creates tension when the buyer is unrealistic about what kind of deals are available, and they view any pushback from their agent as disloyalty or laziness.

I often have these conversations:

• Buyer: “I will offer $650,000 (final offer) on this home that’s listed for $700,000.”
  Me: “The seller’s own agent will advise them that, rather than taking your lowball, they might try a price reduction first, to see if that attracts people willing to pay more than $650k.”
• (In a market where things are selling quickly and close to asking price)
  Buyer: “Did you see that new place that was listed for $50,000 above my max price? Can we see it right away?”
  Me: “Let's wait a week or more – they certainly won't be accepting any low offers out of the gate!”
• Buyer: “That 1950s home we viewed, with the roof that needs replacing; let’s offer $20k below asking price because that’s the cost for the new roof.”
  Me: “They disclosed that the roof is end-of-life; everyone knows it's an old house – that's why it’s listed for $700,000 instead of $850,000. We can talk about the roof as we present our offer, but we shouldn't assume they forgot about that defect while pricing the home.”

Not every buyer appreciates my sober perspective. I was once fired by a client who had called me on a Sunday evening, wanting me to write an offer for $500k (final offer) on a home listed for $600k. I explained that this was a doomed scenario but to my credit I agreed to at least “give it a try” because I liked this client and thought maybe they just needed to learn the hard way, even though it would be a waste of several hours of my time, and an insult to the sellers and their agent. My client initially agreed to give it some time, but called me the next day and said he was going to work with an agent who “Had his best interests in mind.” (That house sold a few weeks later for $581,200.)

But I’m happy to report that most buyers are willing to accept my expert opinion! I had a good experience recently with buyers who were thinking along the lines of the imaginary buyer quoted in the bullet points above. For example, wanting to make very low offers (low for our current market), wanting to see newly-listed places they couldn't afford, and wanting to discount an offer price according to a list of defects we had noted.

I wanted to manage their expectations so that we didn’t waste a lot of time and emotions, but I was also really worried about annoying those clients because they’re great to work with, and I could sense they just needed to be TOLD in the right manner. So, I pulled the data, which I will show below – it states unequivocally what I wanted to demonstrate: Nobody is accepting lowball offers.

Here's the data – it's a list of every single-family detached home currently in pending status (i.e., the price was negotiated recently) in Nanaimo, listed under $850,000. I also omitted listings built after 2015.

The sales with a blue background sold above asking price and the salmon pink background shows the ones that sold at least $40,000 below the original asking price (but see the days on market for those). For those wondering, the average sale-price-to-list-price percentage was 98.043% which means a home listed for $750,000 likely sold at a discount of about $15,000 which is probably what most people might expect if they've been involved in our market in recent years.