maybe but the thought came naturally
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Is it really worth paying the asking price or thereabouts just to make you feel good and to think that people will remember you as a good egg and take you in as a member of the community with open arms.
Each to thier own but behind your vendors or your neighbour’s aweet smile is the knowledge that the vendor would have sold for X and the lucky so and so got the full price.
Bartering is perhaps the oldest trading tool in the world and the seller would not agree to the buyers offer if they weren’t happy.
Bid low and see what happens. The vendors are not offended, they simply say no if not interested.
I have bought and sold many houses and each transaction would not have happened if both parties were not happy.
Never pay the asking price and negotiate hard, you are thought of no less for that.
4 years ago just before the Brexit referendum I was in the process of buying a UK renter. The day after the vote with just 2 weeks to completion of the sale I reduced my offer as I was unsure how future property prices would be. The vendor agreed and the sale went through. That same vendor became my tenant for 9 months while thier new house was being built and they were model tenants. We still communicate.
The farmer who we bought our home from here 10 years ago dropped the asking price a week before we viewed. We offered 15% less than his new price and finally agreed at around 12%.
Never ever thing you are doing someone a favour paying the full price to put you in a good light, life isn’t like that, be brave, bid hard and you will be loved or hated which ever way the hammer falls.
Oh and I dont loose any sleep at night aslife is too short and I still have friends😃.
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In my case it wasn’t appropriate. You are free to do as you like. I also very much doubt that you have ever got as good a bargain as I bought. 
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tourism or property purchase
I’m inclined to agree with David - sometimes it is not appropriate and you have to tailor your approach to the individual situation.
If you buy houses to develop and sell on for gain of course you will “bargain hard” - it’s your profit we’re talking about and if this deal is not closed another will be around the corner. But there are as many house selling/buying scenarios as there houses to buy and sell and people to buy and sell them.
I don’t regret paying the asking price - keeping half a weather eye on prices locally I think I paid a fair price; knowing how much money the vendor poured into the property I am certain of it.
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It’s not about making me feel good, but just humanity. Thankfully in some circumstances that still trumps money. The 18 year old son of the people we bought from had died in a car crash outside the house. They were desperate to move as it was really harming the mother’s mental health. They had had an offer which had fallen through at the last moment, so were hugely stressed. Sure we could have used this to really beat them down more on price as we knew they were desperate to go. But I couldn’t live here if we had. Could you?
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In a word, Yes.
Try completing the sentence.
…my French wife and me am.
… my French wife and I am.
Oh John! If only I had had those words written or spoken to me back in 1992! I didn’t pay full price for the small boatyard I bought but I did, as it turned out, overpay by a significant amount. My fin advisor and accountant failed me utterly - due diligence, not.
The extra loan finance that was required - and I signed the contract two days before Black Friday when Lamont put the Bank Rate up to 15% [?] and I was on 4% over base - meant that I was always behind the curve, despite dragging the business off its knees.
At one point, as negotiations with lenders dragged on and on [“Proposal? - don’t even waste the stamp. We’ve locked the doors and shuttered the windows. There’s blood all over the walls in here.” [verbatim: Lloyds Bank] I had the estate agent yelling down the phone at me "You will be responsible for a suicide!"
The only person who talked the kind of sense you just expressed was the woman doing the small biz course my g/f was on. Hearing that one of the seller’s lenders was about to foreclose if I had not signed within the next fortnight she said, “Then go on holiday for 3 weeks and pick it up for peanuts”
I stuck to the number we’d previously agreed - about £150,000 too much, as it turned out - because I disregarded the advice about going on holiday and failed to consider what you have expressed.
The constant struggle - my mother’s house was part of the loan finance set-up - resulted in me pretty much falling apart, once the pressure was off after selling up for what I’d paid 7 years earlier.
Depression - I took some comfort when I read “Even the most stout-hearted are not immune” You’re never cured. It just fades into the shadows but can always come back.
To put the ‘asking price’ in perpective, this business was first advertised at £1m. ‘Parking’ for boats on the south coast was booming at the time. Contracts had been exchanged with a buyer at £600k. They then withdrew. Years later the suit for breach of contract was trumped by the ‘buyer’s’ counter-suit of misrepresentation.
I paid £330K - about double it’s value.
On the other hand, sometimes the asking price is indeed OK. The flat I have in Valencia was reduced from €80k to €70k 3 days before I saw it. There was every reason to believe the agent when he said that he had a queue of people behind me for this place. And it now being on sale at €185k after a €30k do-up confirms that.
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Me and my French wife are …
I think that, considering the John Hall and Jane Jones approaches, what is important is how all parties feel when all is done and dusted and they have engaged in the new lives which resulted from the sale/purchase .
In the case of the people who sold to Jane, getting away from the site of that tragedy was the most important thing in their lives. A modest - not swingeing - reduction would not have gone amiss. Being elsewhere was all. The proceeds of the sale, whatever they were, would be as nought compared to the emotional cost of their son’s death. If they’d been given double, their pain would be no less.
In the case of buying for business the only consideration is the bottom line, assuming all is done legally . Otherwise, as I should have done, go sailing.
you have all gone off course
the topic has changed
Not that that has never happened before
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Try again,
My French wife and I are.
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We are both correct.
“Me …
And you …
God knows
It’s not what we would choose to do”
I’ve never understood those lines by Roger Waters in “Us and Them”. PF chose to do it for many years and when he decided to stop and the other three wanted to continue, he sued them to desist, and lost.
But his grammar was OK
my grammar is bad but that does not make me an idiot
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Well the tourists eat junk and so do the French. [quoting Barbara Deane 
]
Do the French eat junk food?
I’ve seen a French teenager eating a Big Mac and frites, so yes.
I’ve seen a French family tucking in to a jumbo stuffed-crust pizza with all the trimmings and a 2L bottle of Coca Cola, so yes
The consumption of so-called junk food in metropolitan France is estimated to reach 1.25 billion Euro each year, so yes.
What generalisation? 
and hospital food is lacking nuitriton
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Ah… this is one area where I have a little local experience.
Fresh fruit and/or compote, yoghurt, cheese, meat, fish, tomato, beetroot, bread, pasta … certainly remember getting that lot at various mealtimes…
We all have different experiences… but I certainly didn’t starve and nearly always cleaned my plate.