Just as an example of how it goes...
I have been looking for a place to move to recently as the owners of the apartment we are currently renting are looking to sell, urgently (for Argentina). They were trying to sue their father for outright ownership of the apartment (it was their mother's apartment, who died about 7 years ago but she had bought it while they were married, but had divorced years previous to her death and the father was never around until the mother died) and after years of legal battle, they have finally received a judgement from a court that they must sell (there's actually a total of 5 properties involved) to split up the proceeds. Of course, when we signed the contract, I had told them that we were interested in staying a long time there and they didn't disclose their legal battle. It was about six months after we'd moved in that they came to us, admittedly a bit shame-faced, and told us about their problem, in which conversation they also told us that if some grumpy old man comes around and rings the bell, to tell him we are friends of theirs, not paying rent, and that he should go away (that's actually happened three times - the father asks "who's in my apartment?" at the top of his lungs). BTW - we have a contract signed by an escribano and the real estate agents were ReMax. We didn't just move into some place without doing the right things.
They are asking a cool $500K US for the apartment. It's pretty big, and according to average prices in my neighborhood, it's only over-priced about $75K - for property that's in good shape. The apartment itself is not bad, though the building is old (and the worst problem is the horrible and scary smell of gas that comes out of the basement, wafting up the stair and elevator shaft in the winters when the furnace runs at full). The apartment needs all new fixtures and such, which haven't been replaced since the 70s (at least), and the floors to the back of the apartment are not finished, but covered with an outdoor carpet and you can feel the uneven-ness of the floor as you walk on it. It's why I got such a good deal on a large apartment in Recoleta.
They've had a number of people come out to look at it, but they won't come down on the price at all. And even if they hadn't tried to sue their father, they need the money anyway. But they would rather wait until their father dies and continue to have the property for rental value (they've actually told us that). But they, themselves, are in problems with money and they don't want to sell at all and have even colluded with the real estate agent to ensure that the apartment was placed well over market price (yeah, they told us that too - they want us to stay here to keep renting!).
So today, I go to look at a house in Villa Devoto. Pretty nice area. I've looked at a number of houses out there. I'm looking to rent. The only problem I have is that the girls all have business in town of one form or the other and they don't like the train ride and then subte and then bus to get where they need to get for school and work. But due to the rising cost of EVERYTHING we probably don't have any choice but to move out of Recoleta (where I've lived 7 out of the last 10 years).
So the house we went to look at - we walked in and the den was pretty nice, but every other room in the house was a disaster! Paint peeling off walls, floors messed up, etc. But it had potential. We noticed there was a for-sale sign on the house when we went in. I was thinking in my head that this would be the perfect to place to knock a few thousand off the monthly rent in exchange for painting and fixing the place up over the next couple years.
When I offered the real estate agent the possibility, he says "what kind of guarantee do you have?" I told him - it's in CapFed and from some good friends of ours who have been our guarantors for about 7 years now, our last two apartments. Not good enough. Has to be familiar. It didn't matter what I did to talk to him about this (even offering bigger deposit, etc), the guy says "sorry, the owner has insisted that if he rents it (instead of selling) it will only be with a garantia familiar. I talked to the real estate agent a bit more and he goes on to tell me the owner has been trying to sell the place for a bit over three years now and is asking far too much, and only recently decided to try to rent it also, and whichever type of transaction had a bite first, he'd go with. In my opinion, he'll never sell it or rent it out. The place is a disaster! Though in a good neighborhood...
Anyway, my long way of saying I agree with Garryl and On the Brink about the possibility of something like a 20% discount. Very unlkely.
