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Bargaining isn't part of this country's mass-marketing culture. You'd be laughed out of your friendly neighborhood McDonald's if you tried haggling with the counterperson over the price of your Big Mac. Americans don't generally dicker to drive prices down. Instead, they comparison shop on the Internet or drive from shopping center to shopping center to find lower prices.
Face it. Whether you're aware of it or not, all the ads that you read in newspapers, hear on the radio, and see on TV through the years eventually take their toll. With most consumer products other than cars, we've been conditioned for generations to docilely pay the sticker price. (Smart sellers know how to use this conditioning to their advantage when pricing houses.)
Like it or not, you must sit at the bargaining table if you offer your house for sale to the public. Even if you're not the haggling sort, you certainly don't want to sell your house for less than it's really worth. And you have every right to be cautious regarding the advice of real estate agents and others involved in your transaction who stand to profit from a quick sale.
Knowing your house's worth isn't enough. You must also be a good negotiator to minimize the chances of being forced into accepting a crummy offer and to maximize the proceeds from your house's sale.
We can't offer you a magical, one-size-fits-all, guaranteed best negotiating strategy that you can use in every situation, because no such strategy exists. Smart sellers adjust their negotiating strategies to accommodate such factors as whether they're dealing from a position of strength or weakness, how well-priced their houses are, how motivated the buyers are, and, of course, how motivated they, themselves, are.
Negotiation doesn't have to be complicated. On the contrary, good negotiation is based on a few simple concepts. Apply the concepts in this chapter to your negotiations to maximize the chances of getting precisely what you want when you sell your house.
Unless you're an unquenchable emotional vampire, the massive pulses of intense feelings radiating from both sides of the bargaining table will quickly drain your energy. House sales are usually emotional roller coasters for everyone involved. You probably still bear the emotional scars from the turmoil you endured as a homebuyer.
Now, as a house seller, you're about to sit on the other side of the table. If you don't get enough from the sale, you may not be able to buy your next dream home. Buyers may accuse you of being greedy if you try to sell your house for a great deal more than you paid for it. Conversely, buyers won't shed any tears if you lose money when you sell; it's not their fault the local economy went as soft as a jelly doughnut.
Consider the powerful emotions acting on you when you sell your house:
- Big needs: Food, security, and shelter are the three most basic necessities of life. Like two bears fighting for a single cave, you and the buyers will do verbal battle over a place to live.
- Big egos: The house you're about to sell is your castle. If buyers or their agents attempt to justify a low offering price for your house by citing its real and imagined flaws, your blood may boil.
- Big money: Whether this house is the first you sell or the last, the money you have in it probably represents one of your largest investments. The amount of money you receive when you sell isn't the issue. When major sums of real money are at stake, the emotional intensity for you and the buyer is just as great, no matter whether your house sells for $150,000 or $1.5 million.
- Big changes: Selling a house would be stressful enough if you had to deal only with the impact of needs, egos, and money. Throw in a major life change, such as job relocation, marriage, divorce, birth, death, or retirement, and the result is an emotional minefield.
