Negotiations

By Larry Schottenstein on October 19, 2009

I was working with a buyer looking for a nice home in Upper Arlington. They wanted a unique home, which can be difficult to find and they can also be difficult to sell since they may have a limited market. We found an interesting house listed for around $520,000, which is not high end for Upper Arlington.  The home was somewhat  outdated and needed some work. Consequently my clients initial offer was low.  This isn’t a bad approach when it is hard to determine the value, start low and test the see how low you can pull down the price. We negotiated back and forth but we couldn’t make a deal, were just too far apart. The buyers do what they typically do, we moved on and found another home. The seller didn’t know when to take a good deal and how time can change things for the worse.  They should have stretched a little more and made a deal when they could have. Instead they wanted to hold out for something better.I noticed over the next several months how the price of the home kept dropping and dropping. It wasn’t long before the asking price dropped well below the price we had offered.  Now the seller would be lucky to get a price even close to what we were offering and he is in a much weaker position.  e be careful about passing up on the deal you can have for the deal you may have. Once you add in the time, effort, mortgage payments, stress and worse of all, buyers more then willing to make low offers based on your perceived weakness it is usually not worth it.  In this case the seller cost themselves over $20,000 for this one mistake.  The real value of a good listing agent is to recognize these issues and be able to give the seller real advice they can count on. Too many sellers think the only job of the listing agent is to just marke the home. the job of the agent is to protect your investment and maximize it’s potential.