Jul 08
16
FSBO: Negotiations
This really won’t be a large section since I talked about most of this stuff in discussing how to come to a price. As I wrote before, I tend to price the house at what I feel is a fair price (likewise, when I purchase a home, I offer what I feel is a fair price and don’t wiggle much from there). I have reasons for why I feel the price is fair and I’m clear in communicating my reasons.
Here’s the key to negotiating the price: Don’t get emotional.
Emotions cloud everything. You want the buyers to be emotional. You want them to be excited. Most of all, you want them to be afraid of losing the opportunity to buy the house. If you haven’t had the house on the market for long and you get an offer that’s lower than you feel is right, don’t be afraid to pass it by. More importantly, though, don’t get greedy. If the house has been on the market for a while and you get an offer within reason, don’t let emotions about how you feel about the house cloud your judgement.
You have to always remember that you do not set the price of your house, the current market sets the price of your house. If you haven’t gotten many bites, it’s because you’re trying to sell it for too much.
Often times sellers put a lot of value in the work that they put into the house or the memories associated with the house and these things may not have equal or even any value to the people in the market to buy a house. Buyers don’t care if your kids learned to walk in the house or whether your grandmother had given you the bulbs that you planted in the front flower bed. All a buyer cares about is how your house compares to others on the market and how much they cost in comparison to what you’re asking.
So essentially, the theme of this post is simply to not get emotional in the negotiations. Selling your house is business and you should look at it as business and the decision as to what you will accept for your house is a business decision.