We fell in love with the house
and just HAD to have it.

 

Lesson: Keep your love to yourself. Put your options on the table.

In his best-selling book You Can Get Anything You Want, Roger Dawson, the world-renowned negotiating expert, tells how a negotiation slipup cost him $30,000 when he was buying his family's home.  Roger writes that one day while teaching his daughter to drive in the secluded hills of Southern California, he spotted the house of his dreams.  Everything about the house was perfect, he says, and it was for sale.

Posing as a reluctant, if not altogether indifferent, buyer, Roger relates how he plotted his negotiation strategy - only to see it evaporate when his wife and daughter returned to look at the house without him.  They oohed and aahed over every feature, and by the time they were through with their tour, "they had demolished my reluctant buyers plan,"  says Roger.

Buyer Mistakes Cost a Lot of Money

It also didn't help matters when his wife told the sellers Roger really thought their house was wonderful.  At that point the sellers knew the Dawsons were hooked.  With a ticket price of $15, Roger says many people think a tour of Hearst Castle at San Simeon is expensive.  But he calculated that one house tour by his wife and daughter cost him $30,000.00.

What Not to Do When Talking to Sellers

When talking with sellers, you've got to walk a fine line.  Yes, you want to show interest, develop a cooperative, problem-solving attitude, and prevent critical remarks that may offend.  Yet you can't go overboard with lavish praise.  Nor do you want to tell yourself, "This is the perfect house, we've simply got to have it."

In other words, don't shut out other options - either in your own mind or in the eyes of the sellers.  When the sellers believe you've eliminated other houses from consideration, they'll naturally use that information to bolster their own position.  Should you tell yourself, "Nothing else will do," you abandon the strongest negotiating power any buyer has - the willpower to walk away from the deal.  Sometimes emotions do get the better of us.  But keep in mind that once you relinquish your walk away willpower, you might as well hand the sellers a blank contract and let them fill in the numbers.

This Homebuyers Tip was excerpted from:

The 106 Common Mistakes Homebuyers Make, by Gary Eldred, Ph.D., John Wiley  Sons, Inc., 1994.

ISBN# 047131191X

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