Real Estate Negotiation – What We Can Learn from the “Super” Committee and Occupy Philly

I love to negotiate.  I love to sell real estate.  Day or night.  Weekday or weekend.  It is what I do.  And I am one of the best in Philadelphia.  It is a skill.  Part of that skill is to know when to stop and to know when to recommend a deal to your buyer or seller client and NOT TO OVER-NEGOTIATE.  That is when it becomes an art.  And that is when you become a true deal-maker.  Over-negotiation can be a deal-killer.

Two recent examples outside of real estate that come to light where it puts things into perspective are:

1. The "Super" Committee
2. Occupy Philly

The "Super" Committee

Here is a case where twelve politicians clearly tried to over-negotiate from Day 1 refusing to back down on anything or compromise on points that could have brought a deal together.  Clearly, there were a lot of options that both sides could have compromised on that a deal could have been crafted, but beliefs, politics and plain old being stubborn got in the way.  When this happens, it is a detriment to both sides (and to the country as a whole).  We already can see the after-effects in the stock market in the last week since the debacle and there will be more ripples to come.  In my view, all twelve of these "politicians" are on my "wall of shame" but that is another story.  The point here of the blog is that over-negotiation gets you nowhere!

Occupy Philly

Same with Occupy Philly.  They held firm with the City of Philadelphia with their stance "We will not leave Dilworth Plaza." That stance and over-negotiation lost them leverage to work out a deal over the last several weeks to have both a better plan of an alternative site as well as logistics of overnight privileges.  Now they are left with very little options besides going across the street but with no tents and no overnight options.  At the most recent General Assembly (November 25th), it was utter chaos with Occupy Philly split in several different groups, in complete disarray, no direction, and being completely lost with their direction.  It all gets back to over negotiation several weeks ago.  And what gets me is that they have been so obsessed about this negotiation with the city that their movement has lost its original foundation and message, but again I digress... And I am still pissed from being censored on their Facebook page, which does not allow civil discussion.

Real Estate

I am sure everyone can relate to this story.   I can guarantee this happens all over the country every week.  It happened to one of our sellers about two months ago.  An offer came in on their property.  Instead of being happy like most sellers, they were agitated by the sales price and held firm on their listing price.  We were able to negotiate the offer where it was only $5K from their listing price.  Here was their chance to get it sold!  Nope...they just did a reduction.  Holding firm!!!!!   I strongly recommended to take the deal and said that they were "over-negotiating and reminded them it was a buyers market.  My recommendation was not heard.  We did not hear from the buyers agent for a few days.  Sellers call a few days later, "Okay, Chris, we will take it."  We follow up with the buyers agent "Buyer found another property".

Conclusion:   Be careful of over-negotiation.  AND, listen to your Realtor!

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