Sometimes people are stubborn to a fault. Especially when buying real estate. Buyers and sellers get caught up in emotions, draw mental “lines in the sand” then threaten (and sometimes do) walk away from perfectly good deals over a relatively small amount of money. They don’t know how to negotiate or they let emotions dictate that they negotiate poorly.
For what it’s worth, here is my best advise to bring everyone to the deal done. It doesn’t matter if we are trying to bridge a $25,000 gap in purchase price, or a $2000 gap in “stuff” after a home inspection comes back less than perfectly. The philosophy is still the same. 65/25/10.
The idea is two fold. Start with the end in mind. Say for example, you are buying a house you feel is a good deal at $300,000. Your seller is holding out for higher and you are at $280K. So you are $20K from your target. So I would offer $13K or $293,000 on my first move. This is more than most people would, but again, I have a target of $300K and I am unlikely to get them to bite on $282K or $285K. If they take my $293K offer great. But they likely won’t. They will counter and I will go back to them with another $5000. This would get me up to $298K. My seller may bite here, they may not but I have given less than I did last time and now we are in the ballpark. Now if they counter again, I tell my agent, or the other agent or anyone that will listen that they are bleeding me dry, I don’t have another penny to give and throw the last 10% or the $2000 out on the table.
What this strategy does, is subtly creates the impression that you are squeezing every penny you can into the deal. You are representing, without saying it out loud, that there is no magic pot of money hiding behind the scenes to get into the deal. This strategy has worked for 20 years in a variety of different areas for me. Try it, get your sellers to try it, you will close more deals with less crazy.
