Best of luck to you...I hope things work well. Your price gap is considerable (your original offer was 80% of their asking price), so I'd say that if you're truly serious in wanting it, you probably want to cross the 90% line...especially if you're asking them to invest money in the roof repairs. I'm no expert though...aside from having purchased a home myself and my parents selling real estate for 20 years...not that I was ever involved in the deals though. I'm just applying my own logic here.

Home ownership is definitely a mixed bag. My wife and I own a house...purchased it in 1998. During that time we've lived in it for about 6.5 years...well my wife and kids have...I was in Afghanistan for about 2.5 years of that. We had it rented to a tenant for about 4 years while we were stationed elsewhere...and now have a new tenant since we moved this past December. I have to say that I somewhat regret owning it...but if I were able to live in it all the time I wouldn't. It's nice to have your own home and be able to do as you please...it's at times a burden to do the upkeep, renovations, etc...or when something big breaks, it's a seriously emotional event...especially if you don't have the savings account to fix it. Oh...and then you have things like we had during our most recent year of occupancy...sewer installation where we got slammed for the max assessment because we have the most road frontage on the street...and then also had our water main bust in the front yard during the same year...it was an expensive year.