When buying or selling a house, negotiations play a huge part of the process. For instance, the seller sets the price of the house. The buyer can offer the seller full price or as in most cases, negotiate by coming back with a lower counter offer. In addition, the buyer may negotiate with the seller on certain features. In this case, the buyer may request the refrigerator and stove be left, that window treatments remain, or that a carpeting allowance be provided. To be successful with negotiations, whether you are a seller or buyer, we have pulled some great rules together for you.
First, you need to do your homework so you have negotiating power on your side. To give you an example, if you are selling your home, walk through each room to
determine items needing to be fixed or updated. The better condition the home is in the less negotiating power the buyer will have. On the other hand, if you were the buyer, you want to take your time by looking at a number of houses. In fact, some people will look at 30 houses or more over a six-month period, which we recommend you consider. The reason is that you get closer to the perfect house, which can lessen the burden of too many negotiations.
Next, take time to understand why the seller is selling. Let us say that you are buying a home. You find one that you really like but in order to understand how much negotiating power you have, you need to know why that individual is moving. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate in asking a seller the reason for putting the house on the market. If you find the buyer is going through a foreclosure, or has been transferred to a new home then you can be sure this is a motivated seller, meaning you can negotiate much harder. However, if the seller is simply selling for a smaller or larger home without any deadlines, he or she may not be as hard pressed to bargain.
You also want to understand which person in the home is the negotiator. It is common to find either the husband or wife taking control over how strong the negotiations. Therefore, learn who has the final authority so you can understand whom to work on so to speak. Many times, negotiations on contingencies in this case will not work well since the person of authority is a no-nonsense type individual who wants a clean and easy sell.
Finally, do not be afraid to act. One of the strongest strategies you could use is to adopt an attitude of “I don’t care”. In other words, you would pretend that the sell of the house is not a big deal. Therefore, if you are selling a house and you get someone interested in buying who begins to make strong demands, you can take the attitude that their offer could be accepted or declined and that it really does not matter. What happens is that the buyer quickly understands he or she cannot push the seller too hard or they will
lose.