Asking price vs Offer price

[V10leptoquark]

Talking about buying outright - not renting/financing......

Everyone should buy on the condition of the vehicle, this is a given, but many sellers will state their asking price by adding that they are fully aware of the vehicle condition and have priced it accordingly.

Two sides to the story of a sale of course.

So from a buyer perspective, do you all have a general rule as to what you realistically offer as a percentage of the asking price?
For example, when you view car adverts online and notice a £50k asking price tag, would you automatically assume that this was a realistic £47,000 ?
Or on a £100,000 advert, would you look at this as being £95,000 ?

From a private seller perspective, I'm sure many of us know the game quite well, and I've sold cars in the past and purposely added a bit here and there to account for sellers 'discount' to get the deal done.

But not being a car dealer and not being a private buyer/seller with a significant volume of car sales is there a consensus on how much is expected between asking price and offer price?

[RobinBanks]

Seller wants as much as he can get and buyer wants the opposite.
Selling a decent car privately is a total pain with the “best offer m8” followed by dealers waiting for the advert to run down till the last few days and bidding you in the nuts!
Punters know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Pericoloso]

Make a sensible offer ,not an insultingly low one.

If vendor says no ,walk away or increase offer if you really want it.

[drcarrera]

I've haven't (yet!) bought anything over £100K but when buying new or used I never put in an initial bid of more than 10% less than the asking price. The vendor can always say no. Obviously, if the car seems overpriced I factor that in as well so if it's up for 10% over what I'd consider market value, my initial bid would be 20% under asking price. I'm no expert though, and I do find the whole process pretty stressful and not at all fun!
But ultimately, of course, what a car is worth is what a buyer is prepared to pay for it ...

[V10leptoquark]

drcarrera said:

I've haven't (yet!) bought anything over £100K but when buying new or used I never put in an initial bid of more than 10% less than the asking price. The vendor can always say no. Obviously, if the car seems overpriced I factor that in as well so if it's up for 10% over what I'd consider market value, my initial bid would be 20% under asking price. I'm no expert though, and I do find the whole process pretty stressful and not at all fun!
But ultimately, of course, what a car is worth is what a buyer is prepared to pay for it ...

Most if not all performance cars over the past 5 years or so have crept in to the 'overpriced' area
Obviously overpriced from a buyer perspective - and a case of sitting on it until it sells from a seller perspective.

I guess this comes down to how one perceives the 'current market value', again very different angles between seller and buyer.
For example a typical £50k from a trader or private seller on Autotrader can often show up as £40-45k on the likes of "we buy any car"...or 'trade price'.
So it can be a bit of a task to assess what is the 'real' market value.

But at the end of the day you are perfectly right that a car's value is what the buyer pays for it.