How do you negotiate the price of a home?

Negotiating the price of a home is not about guessing your way to the “right” price. It is about establishing the gap between the asking price and the likely sale price, and the best way to do that is to read the sales brochure (salgsopstilling), the condition report (tilstandsrapport) and the market facts thoroughly.

The price is only one of the terms of a sale. The handover date, financing, reservations and other conditions can also affect how the seller ends up responding. A well-documented offer based on comparable sales and the correct floor area is in a much stronger position than a low offer that has not been thought through.

In 2026 the market is pulling towards rising prices. Nordea expects house prices to rise by around 4 per cent, owner-occupied flats by around 4,9 per cent and holiday homes by around 3,7 per cent, so the room for negotiation looks different from how it did a few years ago.

Here you get a practical method for preparing a documented offer, making sense of bidding rounds and knowing when you are bound.

Room for negotiation when buying a home

Your room for negotiation when buying a home is the gap between the asking price the seller has set and the price level the market figures actually support. The asking price is a wish, while sale prices in the area show what buyers have actually paid. That range is where you negotiate the price.

• Nordea expects the price of an average 140 m² house to rise from 3.001.000 kr. on 1 January 2026 to 3.232.000 kr. by the end of 2027, a total increase of 231.000 kr.

• In the 2nd quarter of 2026, detached and terraced houses sold for an average of 19.521 kr. per m² nationwide, up 9,0 per cent in a year, while owner-occupied flats stood at 44.816 kr. per m².

• Interest rates are stable, and short-term rates on variable-rate loans and on supplementary bank loans at a loan-to-value ratio of 80-95 per cent have fallen, which reduces your borrowing costs.

• Low supply, compounded by the slowdown in new construction in 2022-2023, limits the flow of new homes and supports prices, especially in the cities.

Rising prices, low supply and falling borrowing costs all point the same way. Sellers are in a strong position right now, so your room for negotiation is relatively tight. You gain the most by basing your offer on the actual sale prices per m² in the area rather than on the asking price alone.

How to prepare your offer and your price ceiling

Before you make an offer on the home, two figures must be fixed: your price ceiling and your financing limit. The price ceiling is the most you are willing to pay, and the financing limit is the amount the bank will actually lend you. Both must be settled before you send the offer. An offer you cannot follow through on is worse than no offer at all.

Put everything about the offer in writing, all together, from the start. If you only begin adding conditions or changing terms after the deadline has passed, you are in a weak position.

An offer should set out all of the following in one place:

• The price you are offering, that is, the specific amount you think the home is worth to you.

• The handover date you want, which can matter as much to the seller as the price.

• Any work or costs you will take on, for example repairs or the costs connected with the change of ownership.

• The reservations you want to make, such as financing or a review by your adviser.

• The offer period you give the seller to reply.

When you make an offer on an owner-occupied flat, a strong offer is based on comparable sales in the area, the correct floor area and the owners’ association’s documents. Comparable sales show what others have paid for similar flats, and the floor area ensures you do not pay for square metres that do not exist. The owners’ association’s documents reveal its finances and any planned works that may affect what the flat is worth to you.

If the offer is to be financed, you should make it subject to approval by the bank and the mortgage credit institution (realkreditinstitut), as well as by your adviser, either a lawyer or a building surveyor. Without those reservations, you commit yourself to something you do not yet know whether you can afford.

Your first offer should start from the price level you can justify by pointing to differences. Avoid promising yourself a particular percentage discount, because an offer of “10 per cent below the asking price” says nothing about the condition of the home or the area. A level you can justify with concrete differences carries far more weight in the negotiation and is easier for the seller to take seriously.

From offer to counter-offer in the price negotiation

The process starts when you receive the draft purchase agreement (købsaftale). It contains an estimated cash price as a starting point, and that is not a limit you have to stay within. You can bid both above and below the estimated price, depending on what your evidence and your price ceiling point to.

The offer itself is normally made to the estate agent, and typically in writing. Make sure it contains both the price you are offering and the terms that matter to you, so there is no doubt later about what you actually asked for.

You can make your offer more attractive with, for example, a flexible handover date or other terms that are valuable to the seller. This is where much of the price negotiation happens, because sellers often weigh up more than the price alone.

When the counter-offer arrives, your job is to run the numbers on it, not just read it. Do the following:

1. Enter the new purchase price.

2. Add the costs that the changed terms trigger.

3. Update the amounts for necessary work if new documents change the picture.

4. Compare the result with the walk-away price you set.

Step 4 is the most important discipline in the whole process. The counter-offer is always a little tempting, but you set your walk-away price precisely because you kept a cool head before you became emotionally invested.

Formal or informal bidding round

The fact that several buyers are interested in the same home does not automatically mean that you are in a bidding round. There is a difference between a formal and an informal bidding round, and knowing which one you have landed in is crucial to your negotiation.

A formal bidding round is not an auction. You may not use knowledge of the other bids to raise yours, and the content of the bids is kept secret from everyone until the deadline has passed. The point is that you bid based on your own assessment of the home, not on what the person next to you in the queue has written on their form.

It works the other way too. The estate agent may not create an actual bidding war by playing buyers off against each other, so if you find yourself being pressured to raise your bid with reference to what others have bid, that is not the framework the bidding rules provide for.

So several interested buyers do not in themselves make a formal bidding round. If the estate agent simply receives offers and talks to the buyers individually, it is ordinary price negotiation, and the special bidding rules do not apply.

The practical advice is therefore simple: ask the estate agent directly whether this is a formal bidding round under the bidding rules, or whether the seller is simply in contact with several interested buyers. The answer determines how you should act and which framework you can rely on.

Acceptance, right of withdrawal and the final agreement

Once you have made your offer, it is binding, but not irrevocable. You can withdraw it or replace it with a higher or lower offer, as long as your message arrives before the bidding deadline expires. So it is worth keeping an eye on the clock if you regret a figure or want to adjust the terms along the way.

If you are a consumer, you also have a statutory right of withdrawal (fortrydelsesret). In an ordinary consumer purchase of a home, you normally have six working days after the seller’s acceptance to use it, and as a rule it requires you to pay 1 per cent of the purchase price. The period only starts once there is a binding agreement to withdraw from, so it does not come into play as long as you have only made an offer.

This is the point most people misunderstand: an accepted offer is not a sale. No binding agreement has been made until both you and the seller have signed the purchase agreement. The seller’s yes to your offer is a step along the way, but it is the signatures on the purchase agreement that close the deal.

At Brikk, our recommendation is that both buyers and sellers weigh up the whole package rather than just the price. Have an independent adviser go through the purchase agreement before you sign it, so you know exactly what you are committing to.