CHAPTER 14 Common Negotiation Mistakes
The housing market is a perfect reflection of all aspects of our lives: complex, demanding, flexible, predisposed to difficulties. Sensitive and highly responsive to offer and demand, the housing market is where dreams can be both built and broken. With homes being one of the biggest financial investments, you want to make sure you’re “drawing the longer straw” when selling, which is why you put all this effort into preparing and listing our home. But what happens after the walls are repainted, the carpets changed, the house emptied of personal belongs, the remaining pieces of furniture staged strategically, the front yard bushes trimmed, and the house listed at the right market price? It’s time to close the deal, right? But what if you’ve done all this preparation work, and your home is still not selling? You’ve done everything right, haven’t you? This is when an incompetent real estate agent is often to blame. If your home has been properly prepared and packaged for the sale, if it’s not overpriced, if it’s correctly and extensively marketed, the sale (or lack thereof) usually hangs on your agent’s negotiating skills. Fact: The most common mistake both sellers and agents make is in the way they present the home and lead the negotiations, which can prevent them from selling the house. A strong negotiating muscle is what makes the difference between the homes that sell and those that languish on the market and sometimes expire.
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