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 For example, let’s say that you, the buyer, are interested in a certain home, but absolutely despise its outdated look, with wallpaper and old carpet in some of the rooms, as well as cringe color choices.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 how much it will cost to improve the home — all without insulting the owner and potentially missing out on a sale.
CONTRACTS AND DOCUMENTS
There are many — probably more than you’d like — different contracts and documents involved in a home sale and purchase. Unless you’re a real estate agent yourself, or even a real estate attorney, these documents will most likely be foreign to you. However, they are still necessary and require very detailed and accurate completion. It’s not a simple “fill-in-the-blanks” process with random signatures here and there. There is extensive
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