The Art of Negotiating

Negotiation is often riddled with clichés   Things like, “talk is cheap”, “put your money where your mouth is”, and my least favourite “take it or leave it”!  But these annoying clichés actually do sum up the seriousness of the battle ahead. In essence, if you don’t ask you don’t get. So if you don’t put forward your offer, you are not going to stand a chance.  I always say, it’s not where we start, it’s where we end up, that’s important, and so it’s imperative to put forward your offer to start the negotiations. 

Often, purchaser’s start with explaining to me that they don’t want to put an offer forward for fear of offending the seller. I explain that this is what the agent is supposed to do and I don’t mean offend the seller, but to put the offer in and get the negotiations going.  Many times, there is more room for bargaining then you might assume.  Things are changing all the time and so are individual’s circumstances.  What starts out as ‘testing the market’ could end up ‘blind panic’ because the seller has ‘found’ and all sorts of deals can be struck.  Just because you are a first time buyer or an inexperienced buyer don’t expect your opponents to be automatically harder to deal with.  

According to ancient Chinese military genius, Sun Tzu, "He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious."  As always, arm yourself with information. Find out from your agent why they are selling, have they found, are they leaving the area, is it a divorce, is a job re-location, the more information you have the more informed your decision will be which could reflect in your offering price.  Remember, knowledge is power!

Then once the negotiations have started, how to manage yourself?  Do you sit back and wait? Incidentally, my favourite cliché; “he, who speaks first, loses”.   Try to keep your emotions at bay. Stay focused on the issues that are most important to you. Expect resistance. You need to end up with a price that will create a win-win for both you and the seller. This way, the sale will stay together.  Most importantly, keep an open mind and make no assumptions!