Counter offer from Land Owner!!!

Finally, after nearly a week of waiting, we got a counter offer from the land owner. And it hurts bad. He came down $12,000 from his original asking price of $170,000. We had offered him $118,000- something that may seem like a lowball offer, but remember there are banks that are not loaning money on land period right now- they consider land essentially worthless. We are going to counter offer at $138,000 with $5,000 in closing costs. We know that he had balked on two $135,000 offers a year ago back when the market was much stronger so perhaps seeing that $138,000 number will make him feel he needs to take the money while he can.

I hope that he can come down a good bit more, as we currently would have to spend over half our budget on the lot, something I'm not sure we're prepared to do. The realtor has said we can move into a verbal conversation at this point, rather than revising and countering via fax and email for the next few days. We'll see how he responds to the $138,000 number.