How to Negotiate a House Price Down

Learning how to negotiate a house price down involves learning how to be firm, patient, nonchalant and not emotionally invested during the offer negotiation process. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to make offers on multiple properties, have fewer contingencies and threaten to back out to scare the seller into meeting your demands.

Home Price Negotiation Tactics

Be firm – The listing agent may try to get you to improve on yourself after you submit an offer, so please as firm as a rock on where you stand.

Be patient – Patience is the key to success. If the seller doesn’t have any other offers and their home has been on the market for a while, then more likely than not the seller will come crawling back to you.

Be nonchalant – Tell your buyer’s agent that you are not in a hurry, don’t need to move anytime soon and make sure this gets relayed to the listing agent. Remember, actions speak louder than words, so make sure your buyer’s agent is as nonchalant as you are. That means not bugging the listing agent after you’ve submitted an offer, and waiting for the listing agent to chase you.

Don’t become emotionally invested – If you fall in love with a home, then you’ve lost before you’ve even begun. Make sure to submit all offers with complete emotional detachment. Know that nothing is final until you have a fully executed contract, so there’s no logical reason to get worked up about something that could easily fall through.

Express financial strength – Make sure the listing agent knows just how financially qualified you are. For example, are you capable of putting down more than 20%? Are you buying all cash or otherwise non-contingent? Make sure the listing agent knows just how real of a buyer you are. Then play it cool and wait for them to try to make a deal with you.

Have fewer contingencies – If you have more than enough in liquid assets to cover the purchase price plus closing costs, consider waiving the mortgage contingency to make your offer stronger. A non-contingent offer is much more attractive to a seller because it gives them greater assurance of execution. You never know, a seller just might be willing to take a haircut in price for a greater certainty of selling.

Make multiple offers – The best way to strengthen your negotiating position as a buyer is to make multiple offers on different listings. This way, you’ll have the optionality to be able to pick and choose which ones you wish to move forward with. Remember, there’s no prohibition against you negotiating and getting multiple accepted offers. You can even negotiate multiple contracts to satisfaction, and then choose one to sign.

Threaten to back out – One of the best ways to scare a listing agent is to have your buyer’s agent sincerely mention that you honestly were thinking about backing out from offer negotiations. This will very quickly reveal whether the listing agent was bluffing or not with their counter offer.

Look at hard data – You can always strengthen your case by showing the listing agent similar properties that you could purchase for less. Even better if there are comps in the building that have sold for less, or that have failed to sell. Cold, hard facts are hard to ignore and can cause a seller to cave to reality.

#hauseit #hauseitnyc

[lao-zzfu]

This helps me on the flipside as a seller. Thanks.

[bvbArmyforever]

So I have a quick question. Me and my husband are looking at a house. The house is being sold for $249, 900 someone just backed out and it is on the market again. It was put on the market about 159 days ago would it be too low to ask for about 15-20% off of the asking price.