A Property Investor's Guide to Negotiating by John Potter

Author:John Potter [Potter, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Property and Real Estate, Negotiation
ISBN: 9781742983165
Publisher: Major Street Publishing
Published: 2013-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

The importance of being a good asker

In the previous chapter I talked about how important it is to be a good listener. If you’re tuned in to what your opponent wants or needs to get out of the deal, then you have a much better chance of reaching a successful outcome for all parties involved.

Just as important as listening, however, is asking. It is surprising to me that more people do not ask for what they want, whether it is in a negotiation over a property price, a pay rise at work or when haggling over a TV at the local Harvey Norman store.

I remember back in the late 1980s when the real estate market was showing great strength Australia-wide, many people were scrambling to buy property, including my fiancé and I.

We had seen a house on the Isle of Capri, on the Gold Coast, which had come on the market only days before. It was in a prime waterfront location at the junction of two main waterways, with a fantastic northern aspect. The house was livable, just, but being young we decided we could live in it for a few years, then demolish and build something new when our family started to expand.

The owners were older people who had just retired and were spending lots of time playing golf. As we had to sell our apartment to raise the funds for this purchase, we needed to negotiate a long settlement.

The real estate agent showed us the home which we loved at the first inspection. We asked to meet the owners and they agreed to meet us at the second inspection. This gave me the opportunity to get to know them and explain our position, and to then negotiate a long settlement.

When I asked them where they intended to move to, they told us about an apartment they had contracted to buy which was in the process of being built and would not be finished for around five or six months. We agreed on a price of $650,000, with a deposit of $10,000 and settlement in 180 days.

There were no other conditions to the contract and the vendors made it clear that they were not dependent upon our settlement to purchase their magnificent beachfront apartment. We knew the new building they had bought into, and we were very envious.

We prepared our apartment for sale and had immediate interest. We contracted a sale and timed our settlement to coincide with our house purchase. Everything was going beautifully, and we could not wait to move into our home.

Then one day, out of the blue, I received a call from the vendors of the house asking if they could make an appointment to come to my office for a discussion. When the husband arrived alone, I thought he must be there to brief me on the mechanics of the house such as the pool, maintenance, etc. Instead, after some small talk, he told me that they had decided not to move and would like us to ‘walk away’ and mutually terminate the contract.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.