My First Negotiation

Greetings everyone, this is my first of 3 posts from last week. Again, this blog is about my experiences and my personal view and opinions at the time of the post. Thank you for reading, and I always love to see and encourage people to add to my lists and ideas.

After my morning class today I had my first negotiation on the phone with a seller. This was a warm lead that had already been analyzed that initially came from a mailer I sent out. It was my first time, I didn't have high hopes of anything coming from it other than an a experience to learn from. Nevertheless, I was really excited. This may be a daily thing for some of you guys but for me it was a first, and the idea of “having a first” for anything is very stimulating in my mind, because it means I’m progressing. We as humans thrive on progression, and we always are ether progressing or regressing.

Now, sorry for the tangent. I had already sent the seller an offer of 200K for his duplex he countered at 290. I then called him to have a live negotiation. When I called him I thanked him for his counter and asked him how he got that price. He mentioned a house that sold 18 months ago. I tried to explain that the market has changed since that house sold. I then offered 235. He then started to say, “I will have to run it by…..” I quickly said “Greg, the last thing I want to do is waste your time, so I’m just going to give you our final offer which is 250, I will email that to you and if things don’t work out with your other buyers, our offer stands.” After the phone call, I sat down and replayed the conversation in my head and evaluated it. I think the call went well for my first negotiation, but could pick out a few things I could do better on next time.

• 1) I need to be able to explain my comps and current market value better.

• 2) I should have brought up the repairs that needed to be done.
  • I've learned that often times once you get the seller talking about the damages, it’s almost like starting a catalyst where they keep devaluing the property by not shutting up about everything that’s wrong with it! You could almost imagine a descending odometer and it takes everything you got to keep from rubbing your hands together. Ya, you know exactly what I’m talking about!

• 3) I should have asked him for another counter. I should have asked him “what’s the best you can do Greg” and just waited….

• 4) Is your suggestion! What do you think I can do better on next time!

Later that day I got on the phone with my mentor (and my partner in this deal) he said “Good job Ethan, now when he comes back, prepare some really ugly pictures and let him know that the damage was worse than we originally anticipated and that our offer has changed to 240.

Thanks for reading! Again, I always love discussions, criticism, and advise!