How much did you bid on your home, and what was the final purchase price?  If you don't want to list the dollar amount, percentage would be great. 

Also, any advice on bidding?  

Being that it's a buyer's market, I'm wondering whether it's acceptable to bid (lowball) at 85% of the listing price?   

We bought our house 4 years ago when the market was crashing so it was niether a buyers or owners market lol.  We lowballed A LOT...asking price was around $169,000 we offered $120,000 (the house had been on the market over a year and needed / needs a lot of work) they countered back at $150,000 and said that was the lowest they would go.  So we countered back with $150,000 plus paying our closing costs - they accepted. 

I say bid at 85% - they will tell you the lowest price they will take and you never know they just might accept! Good luck!

Have your realtor run the comps and make an offer based on that... don't low ball too much or you'll risk losing a home you love.  Even though it is supposedly a "buyer's market" that doesn't mean you can get a house for much less than what it's worth.  What that means more than anything is that many homes are priced accordingly, and statistically speaking they are lower than in previous years.  We paid just under listing price for our house because that's what it was worth.

Princessjenn's situation was a little different, it sounds like that house was the handyman special.

I bought my condo five years ago exactly, when the market was quite different. We're now trying to sell our place and looking to buy a larger, single-family home. Some of the houses we've seen have been significantly overpriced. Our realtor walks through pointing out places that we could reference for a low bid - in some cases a house listed at $375,000 he believed should only be purchased for $330,000 - huge difference! In other cases, he has told us quite plainly that the house is at a fair price, and it is unlikely that the sellers will be interested in anything beyond a few grand lower. It also depends on the situation that the sellers are in: are they desperate to move or carrying two mortgages? They might accept low. Have they been there a while and already made some equity? They might accept low.

However, as sellers, DH and I are not in any rush. We listed our place at a fairly reasonable price, and we were insulted when the first offer came in around 10% lower. The counter was better, but it still wasn't enough. We let that potential buyer walk away, and when we encountered a second offer for even less (more than 10% lower), we also let her walk away. Since we're not desperate to move, and since we have to make a certain amount from this condo in order to buy another place, we're not entertaining offers that low. I can guarantee that an offer at 85% would be completely rejected by us, but we hardly represent the variety of sellers out there today.

I would ask your realtor what seems fair and then push it a little further. You might also want to consider offering a higher amount than 85% but also asking for seller assist. 

Our house was listed for $195K, completely gutted and renovated. We were looking at houses around $250, and almost didn't look at ours because it was low.

We found out that they had purchased the house for around $75K after a foreclosure, so we started our offer at $175K. We ended up negotiating and agreed to $186K.

Our house was appraised for $205K. When we go to sell in 2013 (after we've been here for the requisite 3 years to not pay back the homeowner's credit), I don't think we'll sell for less than we paid. I don't want to stay here, but I'm willing to stay until we have kids and the first one is ready to go to kindergarten in order to get what we want out of the house.

I live in a city in Canada that is said to have the strongest economy in North America right now, so our housing market is very different from everywhere else.  Home prices are very expensive here, and there isn't much to negotiate with.  After negotiating (probably started at 5% below asking price) we only got 3% off the asking price, I believe.  It's a nice, newer house in a cul-de-sac of a good community so there wasn't much we could be picky about.  I should also say we bought in the winter, so we probably got a bit of a "deal" since sales are slower that time of year.

Depending on the economy, desperation of the home owners, if it's already a fair price, etc 85% might be reasonable.  I hope you have, or get, a good realtor who can offer you invaluable advice :)

Like FCTF, we also bought in a very different market in early 2007. We also bought a brand new house so we really didn't have any wiggle room. They were asking $240k (I think...its been a long time!) and we offered $235k plus they had to install the central air and pay closing costs. I feel silly that we didn't try to offer less or have them finish the backyard, but there was another interested party and we wanted it!! Plus, that is what our realtor suggested!

Our house was a short sale with a preapproved list price of $380.  So we offered the full amount $380 since we knew that was still a great price.  The house appraised for $450.  I agree with the others that your bid should be dependent on what the comparables sold for.

Ditto Athena. The Metro Vancouver area has been experiencing extremely strong growth in the last few years (analysts keep saying that the bubble is going to burst - but they've been saying that for roughly 30 years now and while the market has shown signs of slowing or even minor dips, there hasn't been any major drops). There is absolutely minimal room for negotiation. If you low ball a seller then you'll a) get a firm response with no change in price, b) no response or c) no response and the house/condo has sold. It's definitely a seller's market around here. With that said, our condo was purchased as a pre-construction home so there was no negotiation involved. Homes/condos here generally go for more than it's asking price

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to provide me your advice.   It's really helpful to hear everyone's feedback from both buyer and seller's standpoint.