Are land/home prices negotiable?

May seem a strange question but I want to know if there is usually room for movement in the prices of land or homes that have not yet been built?
We are yet to put down a deposit for anything, want to know if we could *possibly* save some money by trying to beat them down in price? LOL
Is it worth it??

Location seems to be a factor from our experience, for example a little over 12 months ago when my sister over in WA purchased their block at southern river they negotiated and saved 20k under the asking price.
Comparatively when we made an offer which was 6k below asking (TBH it seemed overpriced so we thought we'd try), aside from at first the real estate agents not wanting to take it to the vendor, the vendor effectively laughed at us and asked us to stop wasting their time.
We did end up signing at the asking price btw, and the way in which the release after ours sold approx 80% of the release was sold over the first weekend it was available and the price for a comparative block in size was around 20-25k more than what we paid, clearly the vendor was aware of the current market over here in SE Melbourne.
He had no need to negotiate due to the current demand, so yeah can't hurt to make a lower offer but don't be surprised if its effectively rejected out of hand if your looking at a popular area.

Land in eastern suburbs of Melbourne - Tried and no hope! You are lucky to get a block and I think my block at 220k was pretty reasonable as it is a decent size.
With the house - I dont think that you can really negotiate the base price down but you can get extras thrown in - for me it was a slight change in the floor plan which resulted in smaller windows extra wall space and extra polished boards - this was acheived by having a "hissy fit" but once you have signed the extras cost a lot. I even found a design fault where the ensuite door opened onto the shower and they charged me $300 to fix that by putting a cavity slider in.
Best advise is when you are at quoting stage try to think of every extra you want so it is factored into the quote so you can see what you are up for.

We asked to take off 20k for our block and they did. Sometimes, they have targets to meet by a certain date so it may work in your favour. We probably should of asked for more but we are not the best negotiators.

It also depends on supply and demand. If the developers have blocks that are a bit more expensive and need to sell, there will be room for negotiation IMHO

Mrs B

Now that the first home owner's boost thingies have finished, demand might drop, so maybe there's room for negotiation.

Of course it depends on where you're buying. As mentioned previously, demand for land in some estates is very high. I'm pretty sure the developer of our estate would just laugh at any offers below asking price, since every stage sells out almost as soon as it goes on sale.

If you are buying from an individual, I would definitely try to negotiate a lower price.

With developers, they dont always jump at lower offers because it may affect the value of all other blocks of land waiting to be sold. If they wont drop on price you could always ask for extras. At first ours tried to offer some landscaping for free, but we ended up getting our stamp duty of $5k paid for us.

Definitely ask I got around $6000 off my block when i bought it, so even a little bit of a discount is bettern then nothing!!

Our block was on sale and we still managed to get a few more thousand off

What's to loose?...it's not as if they won't sell you a block because you attempt to negotiate.

We bought a block from a large land release by a big developer and offered $15k less and got it.

ETA - We also got $11 off the actual house when we built

Everything is negotiable, it all depends on how bad you want it and if you are prepared to walk from the sale and all the can do is say no if you are happy to pay the full price anyway you have not lost out. If you don't ask you don't get.

Goodluck Cheers Lou

Thanks for your replies, definately going to negotiate (or try) any saving is a good one