How to make a lowball offer that gets accepted

How to make a lowball offer in 7 steps

Use the same order on every deal. Each step is covered in detail in the sections below.

1. 1

   Pick a seller with a dated reason to sell

   Work owners whose pressure is on the public record: an auction date, a notice of default, several years of unpaid taxes, a recent inheritance, a vacant house owned from out of state. A lowball to a comfortable owner is junk mail; the same offer to an owner weeks from auction is a solution.

2. 2

   Confirm equity and estimate the payoff

   Add the recorded mortgages, liens and back taxes, then about 1 to 3 percent for the seller's closing costs. If that total is close to the home's value, no cash discount can close, so move on.

3. 3

   Set your ceiling before you talk

   For a flip, use 70 percent of the after-repair value minus repairs. For a rental, use the most you can pay and still cash flow. Write it down and do not change it mid-conversation.

4. 4

   Set a start bid and a likely close

   Place both between the seller's floor and your ceiling. On hard distress, LowBaller's model targets start bids around 40 to 50 percent under value and likely closes around 35 to 45 percent under; on softer situations, 15 to 30 percent under.

5. 5

   Package the certainty

   Cash with proof of funds, no financing contingency, an inspection of 7 days or less, as-is, and a closing date the seller chooses. These terms are what make a low number worth accepting.

6. 6

   Deliver it by mail or a compliant call, then in writing

   Mail reaches every owner. Call only Do-Not-Call-filtered numbers, dialed by hand, 8am to 9pm local time, and never cold text. Follow every conversation with a written offer the same day.

7. 7

   Follow up on the seller's timeline

   Log the no and the reason behind it. Follow up on day 7, day 21 and then monthly, and sooner when the county record changes, such as a new sale date.

Which sellers should you make a lowball offer to?

A lowball offer works when the seller can say yes (they have equity) and has a reason to (a deadline or a cost that keeps growing). The county record shows both. LowBaller's paid list ranks owners with a timing-based Deal Score: the strongest signal counts in full, each other signal adds about a third of its points, and the result is multiplied by the owner's equity. The table puts those pressure points next to the discount band that fits each situation.

Two kinds of owner are poor targets however low you go: owner-occupants with no filings and no deadline, and owners who owe close to what the house is worth. More signs, ranked by strength, are in 14 signs a seller will accept a lowball offer.

How to price a lowball offer: a worked example

Pricing is four numbers you work out before you contact anyone: the as-is value, your ceiling, the seller's floor, and the start bid and likely close in between.

Example A: a vacant house with three years of unpaid property taxes. Estimated as-is value is $220,000. Renovated homes nearby sell around $260,000 (the after-repair value), and the house needs about $45,000 of work. The owner lives two states away and owes $60,000 on the mortgage. The back taxes, with penalties, come to about $14,000.

Your ceiling. Using the 70 percent rule, 70 percent of $260,000 is $182,000. Minus $45,000 of repairs leaves $137,000. That is the most you pay.

The seller's floor. $60,000 of mortgage plus $14,000 of taxes plus about $2,640 of closing costs (2 percent of a $132,000 price) is about $76,640. Any price above that clears their debt.

The start bid and likely close. Years of unpaid taxes put this house in the hard-distress band. A start bid 45 percent under value is $121,000. A likely close 40 percent under is $132,000. Both sit between the floor and the ceiling, so a deal exists. At $132,000 the owner pays off the loan and the county and walks away with about $55,360.

Your room to move. You have $11,000 between the start bid and the likely close, and $5,000 more before your ceiling. Plan each concession in advance and make each one smaller than the last.

When the numbers do not meet: a second example

Example B: a tired landlord. The rental is worth an estimated $300,000 as-is and has been owned for 20 years by an owner who lives across the state. There are no filings and no back taxes. The owner owes $140,000. Renovated homes nearby sell around $340,000, and the work runs about $25,000.

This is a softer situation, so the model band is 15 to 30 percent under value. A start bid 25 percent under is $225,000. A likely close 18 percent under is $246,000. The owner's floor is about $145,000 ($140,000 plus 2 percent closing costs on a sale near $246,000), so the owner can easily say yes.

Your side is the problem. The 70 percent rule caps a flip at $238,000 minus $25,000, or $213,000. That is $33,000 under the likely close, and opening at $213,000 or less means 29 percent or more under value, the far edge of what an owner with no deadline will consider. As a flip, this deal is not there. As a long-term rental it might be, if the rent covers debt, taxes, insurance, repairs and vacancy at $246,000. If it does not, pass and log the owner for a follow-up when something on the record changes.

What should a lowball offer include?

A low number on its own reads as a risk to the seller. The terms around it are what make it worth taking. Each one below removes a specific fear and costs you little or nothing.

Off-market, the offer is a short letter plus a purchase agreement your attorney has checked. On a listed home, it goes through the listing agent on your state's standard form. Either way, the written offer should match what you said in conversation, term for term.

How to deliver a lowball offer: mail, calls and the written offer

Delivery decides whether a low number reads as an insult or a solution. Open with the seller's situation in neutral words, state the certainty, say the number once with one sentence of reasoning, then stop talking. Overexplaining a low number reads as guilt and invites a line-by-line debate.

Channel matters as much as wording. In LowBaller's live measurement in July 2026, about 66 percent of properties on one hard-distress list were owned by companies, trusts or estates, about 26 percent by individuals, and 8 percent had no name. Mail is the only channel that reaches all of them. Skip tracing the individuals returned a phone or an email 88 percent of the time, and Do-Not-Call filtering removed roughly half of the raw phone matches.

So mail every owner, call only Do-Not-Call-filtered numbers by hand between 8am and 9pm local time, and never cold text: TCPA statutory damages run $500 to $1,500 per message. Copy-ready wording for each channel is in the lowball offer scripts.

What to do when the seller says no or counters

Treat the first no as a date, not a verdict. Distress deepens on a schedule: arrears grow every month, auction dates get set, tax penalties compound and empty houses take weather damage. An owner who says no in March can face a sale date in May.

Log the reason for every no, then follow up on day 7, day 21 and monthly after that. Follow up sooner when the record changes: a new notice of sale, a tax sale list, an expired listing. Before you do, re-run the seller's floor, because a growing payoff shrinks the room for a discount.

A counter is good news. It means the seller is willing to sell and your reasoning landed. Do not split the difference; move in shrinking steps and trade each step for a term, as laid out in what to do when a seller counters your lowball offer. And if an owner asks you to stop, stop, and take them off your list for good.

Find sellers worth a lowball offer

The hardest part of a lowball is step 1. LowBaller pulls foreclosure and auction filings, tax delinquency, vacancy, probate and absentee ownership from public county records across 160M+ US properties, ranks owners by Deal Score, and gives every property a suggested start bid and likely close capped at the equity. Unlocking a seller costs 1 credit and returns the owner's phone, with numbers flagged as Do-Not-Call left out; if no contact comes back, no credit is spent. The unlock also pulls the county record (loans, taxes, any amount in default) and re-scores the offer against that record.

Start with the free market scan, about 2 minutes with no card, to see how many motivated sellers are near you. Test any number first in the lowball offer calculator.