Our situation was a little different -- we negotiated with a builder, but for a spec home that was already built -- but we didn't get too far with negotiations either. The house had been on the market for 9 months and they had just lowered the price from 189900 to 184, but there was a lot of stuff that wasn't done. Due to the long amount of time on the market, our realtor thought it would be worth a shot to offer asking price, but ask them to inlclude landscaping, central air, a fence, a counter and cabinet in the laundry room, a gas line to the stove, and closing costs. We figured we probably wouldn't get all of this, but our realtor wasn't scared to give it a shot for us. They came back and said they wanted to take landscaping and the fence off the table, but that they'd include the other stuff if we agreed to up the purchase price back up to the 189900. Since we didn't have enough cash on hand to feel comfortable paying for the essential landscaping, we asked if we could buy it for $195900 and have a 6k landscaping allowance, and they were good with that. In the end, I don't think we got much out of them, negotiation-wise. It was more like we paid the recently reduced asking price, but were able to have all the extra stuff we wanted financed into the loan.
