Even in a heated market it takes a cool head to see an offerthrough to a sale. This is why experienced real estate agents who have been selling property for years will often turn to another agent to handle the sale of their own home. They know what is involved in the sale of a property and they desperately need a person who is not emotionally attached to the sale to act on their behalf.
Agents look for experienced, cool-headed negotiators to act on their behalf.
Negotiating the sale
Assume that a buyer decides that your home is the one they want, so they make you an offer. However, unlike the past, today’s buyer is quite savvy. They understand the negotiating stage to a
far greater extent than ever before and they start haggling with you from the moment they make their first offer. Most likely their first offer will not be their best offer but a low offer just to get the negotiation process started.
You should not be disappointed with their first offer because at least it tells you someone likes your home and wants to buy it. This is good market feedback.
However, a homeowner selling their own property or telling an agent how to negotiate can often react the wrong way. They may take the offer of a lower price as an insult. Instead of trying to negotiate, they inadvertently put the buyer in a position where they have no alternative but to walk away from the sale. A trained, unemotional professional, on the other hand, would see the situation as an opportunity to begin a fair and reasonable negotiation process with the buyer. An experienced agent knows this is just part of the process and acts appropriately. They talk to the buyer about why the property is worth the asking price and point out all the positive features of your home. They patiently explain that similar properties in the area have recently sold for similar prices to your asking price.
This type of approach can put your agent in a strong negotiating position. It makes the buyer re-think their offer because they believe they are likely to lose the property to an alternate buyer who is prepared to pay the market price. A good agent can easily handle these situations because they know the buyer is simply using a ploy to negotiate a better price.
The value of experience
We all know the more you do something the better you become at it. We don’t try to mend our best pair of shoes because we know we are likely to do more damage than good. We just don’t have the experience in boot repair, so we take our best set of shoes to a bootmaker.
A similar philosophy applies to selling a home. Lots of agents all over Australia could tell you stories about people that have walked into their office, frustrated about the fact that they did everything they could to sell their home without an agent. Unfortunately, they just could not close the sale. They advertised their property on the Internet, placed ads in the local paper and put up ‘For Sale’ signs in the front yard. They had people interested in buying but still they could not get the deal done.
When speaking with these people they’ll also tell you that as soon as they turned their property over to a professional real estate agent it sold fast. But why did the agent get a result when the
homeowner could not? Experience is the answer. When a buyer negotiates, a good agent knows exactly what to do. They have been down the selling path so many times before they instinctively know how to turn an offer into a sale. What’s more, the agent may even get the seller a better price, making their commission cheque a worthwhile investment.