Here's a Power move in negotiations, last week we watched an old real estate truth come to life!
Here’s the story
Our buyer client completed her home inspection on Halloween, and the list of issues lived up to the date on the calendar - ghastly! Gutters drained the wrong way, rotting out the fascia boards, the roof, chimney and electrical panel were all toast, and there was a buried oil tank that needed decommissioning. The list went on from there to smaller items.
The buyer still wanted this home to work out. We decided we would do some triage; identify the non-negotiables and strategize how best to get there in negotiations. But when she slept on it, overwhelm set in! She no longer felt excited about the home. The final straw was actually that there was no air conditioning even though the listing had (mistakenly) advertised it!
We sent notice and walked away from the transaction.
Suddenly, Everything Changed
Minutes later, the listing agent called wondering if there was a way to hold this together. I explained about the prodigious repair list and that the A/C snafu mattered. It was just so much! Later, he called to say the seller would install air conditioning AND address the concerns from the inspection if we would be willing to put this Humpty Dumpty deal back together again.
We were surprised, to say the least. The buyer actually started coming back around to the idea of living here.
If we had demanded all of these concessions in our inspection response, I'm willing to bet the seller would have scoffed... and countered aggressively. But the buyer wasn’t negotiating… She was walking away. The other side now wanted to pull us back to the table, so the onus was on them to make a compelling gesture.
The Takeaway
The strongest negotiation position is being truly willing to walk away.
Not pretending. Not posturing. Actually being ready to lose the deal.
That is very difficult to fake and probably inadvisable in a lot of cases. Most buyers settle on a home that is right for their needs. It doesn’t stop fitting just because they don't dominate the negotiations. There is generally some give and take when both sides want things to work. So just to be clear, I’m not advocating walking away every time you are in a negotiation… but if you are genuinely willing to walk away, you might just get everything you want!
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