There isn't any hard or fast rules as to what to you take off on your first offer. I usually do about 10-15,000 of the sale price off? When we had ours on the market in queensland, it was on for $333,000. We got offered $305,000. We laughed our butts off - as IF.

We finally settled on $319,000.

As for the inspections, I wouldn't get a valuation done separately because if you are getting finance, your finance company will already have to get that to make sure the property isn't worth less than what they are giving you.

Just make the contract subject to finance approval and satisfactory pest and building inspections.