3 Essential Tips When Negotiating Price on San Diego Real Estate

May 25, 2010kristaNo CommentsSeller's Cup'o'Joe

One of the key factors when deciding which agent to work with is negotiations! It just is. With all the factors that go ino the process, you just want to make sure that you don’t leave anything on the table while not turning relations between all the parties into sour grapes.

What are the most important elements to negotiating on San Diego real estate?

1. Keep emotions at bay

You cannot get emotionally involved. An offer, even a lowball one is not an insult, it is a representation of the buyer’s sense of urgency in relation with the market and his/her own needs for moving forward with a purchase.

When you get a lowball offer, take a deep breath, sleep on it, and then respond to the offer.

2. Always counter every offer you get

Why? Things change, people change their minds all the time. By not countering an offer, lowball or otherwise, you have guaranteed no possibility of a sale. It may be that the buyer’s spouse just had to have the final say on how much to offer, but the wife LOVED the property. If so, it may be an issue of them working out the numbers between themselves.

3. Don’t be predictable!

If you go down $5,000 everytime that the buyer comes up $5,000, it is pretty obvious where the price will end up at, it also means that you are predictable, and following the path that they want you to follow. You have to change things up, make them wonder, when you do that, they’re ambivalent to play the bargaining game.

Remember that when two people start threatening, pushing, pulling, yelling, screaming, or playing dirty while negotiating, less gets accomplished. Oftentimes, one party will take a stance and not budge, killing the deal and turning everything into sour grapes.