Inspiration

Justified offers

RAT 53 (Rawlings Agency Tip)

When you are negotiating with a vendor, you might say that your main objective is to achieve the best offer from the buyer. Actually, truth be told, it’s to agree a sale at a figure which is acceptable to all parties concerned.

Whilst there are of course many ways of persuading the buyer to increase his/her offer, there will be times when you need to persuade the seller to accept what is, in your professional opinion, the “right” offer.

I’ll share one of the ways of doing this in a moment, Firstly however, we need to recognise that the usual haggling game can sometimes be counterproductive in a negotiation. This is where the buyer starts low and the vendor then comes down a bit, then the buyer comes up a bit and the vendor comes down a bit more and eventually a sales is hopefully concluded somewhere in the middle. But the middle is not always the right place if the buyer cannot be persuaded to rise that far, especially if the asking price is initially inflated.

So may I suggest that a more effective way of getting the seller to accept a lower figure (if of course this is in his/her best interests) is not to encourage haggling, but to find a reason, a justification, as to why the buyer is not offering more. Position it like this, “the buyer would go to £340,000 were it not for the fact that the house is noisier than he had wanted, given the proximity of the main road”. Or “whilst your asking price is within the buyer’s budget, he wants to spend around £40,000 on converting the annexe into a granny flat, so his offer is lower than it would have been had the annexe already been converted.”

A justified offer is apparently very reasonable and difficult to argue against. Why not keep it up your sleeve for your next offer?

May the blessings of the spring market shower you with commission.

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© Richard Rawlings 2010
Richard Rawlings is the founding director of Estate Agency Insight, which specialises in helping estate agencies harness opportunity through innovative method, marketing, publicity, and training. He can be contacted at or on 0845 838 1354.

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