Exclusive Buyer

An agent will also have readily available access to other properties listed by other agents, and can track down homes that meet your criteria, contact the listing agents, and secure appointments for viewing the homes. Navigating all this on your own is much more complicated and difficult, and will also take a lot longer without an experienced agent on your side. NEGOTIATION EXPERTISE Even if you’re well known by family, friends, and colleagues as an expert negotiator, when it comes to negotiating for home prices it’s a whole different ball game. This is where the negotiation skills of a real estate agent come in handy. Sometimes, the home search and home-buying process can become emotional and even heated, but a real estate agent knows how to keep the transaction dispassionate and “at arm’s length,” so to speak, in order to keep clashing personalities, emotions, frustrations, and arguments at bay. Negotiating the price of a home takes a certain specialized skill set as well as the understanding of the psychology of negotiation and bargaining, of offers and counteroffers. For example, let’s say that you, the buyer, are interested in a certain home, but absolutely despise its outdated look, with wallpaper and old carpet in some of the rooms, as well as cringy color choices. You might have a hard time keeping this disdain to yourself, whether out loud or on your face, especially if you tend to be quite honest and blunt rather than subtle. However, if you work with an agent, you can safely and comfortably rant to the agent, privately, about those items you absolutely hate and vent about howmuch it will cost to improve the home — all without insulting the owner and potentially missing out on a sale.