the more knowledgeable you are about the buyer, the better poised you will be in negotiations. DON’T BE MOVED BY AWKWARD SILENCE When you are in negotiations and the buyer makes an offer, don’t be compelled to respond immediately.Whether it be 10 seconds or 10minutes, make the buyer or his agent speak first. They may see your silence as disappointment, and choose to revise their offer or offer a concession just to break the silence. Conversely, do not let experienced negotiators use this same tactic to get you to accept successively lower offers without a counteroffer from you and your agent. DO KNOWWHAT MOTIVATES THE BUYER Sometimes buying agents will work to learn why you want to sell your home. Agents know that sellers want to go to escrow only once. If the buyer is advised to demand a lower price because of minor defects discovered during a third-party home inspection, they will use this as a negotiating tool. More importantly, an agent for the buyer may advise his client to offer the asking price in the full knowledge that minor flaws exist, only to later demand reductions and bring the offer down to what the buyer actually wanted to pay in the first place. DON’T FREELY GIVE OUT YOUR INFORMATION If you have multiple offers on your home, the price isn’t always the bottom line. Sometimes what you tell the buyer is advantageous to his offer. For example, let’s say that you have two interested buyers. One buyer offers full asking price, but tells you he needs a few months to close in order to get financing or to get inspections done, etc. The other buyer casually asks why you are selling, and you offer crucial information that leads the buyer to offer $10,000 less than your asking price, but to agree to close quickly without any financial or inspection-related contingencies. While the first buyer offered more money, the second buyer was more appealing time-wise. If you were under a time constraint, the buyer solved your problem. How did the buyer know about the time constraint? You may have unwittingly disclosed it in an earlier casual conversation when he asked why you were selling.
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