1-Bed London Flat Buyers: Difficulties Negotiating
One thing that most flat buyers find difficult when negotiating on their dream 1-bed London home is leaving their ego at home…
People often see negotiating on a property as an ego trip and an opportunity to ‘show off’ their negotiation skills.
This is a shame…
Please remember that a negotiation (and especially one on your dream home!) is not the best of times to be trying to show off or validate how much of a ‘tough’ negotiator you are…
This thought process would be pure madness!
If you have an ego in a negotiation, you’ll invariably put the other party off or annoy the other party involved.
Please do not go into a negotiation seeing it as a battle and that it’s ‘you against the seller’.
I can understand why you’d think that…
After all, you want the lowest price possible…
The seller wants the high price possible…
By going into a negotiation with this attitude, you will most likely annoy the estate agent.
Do remember, you will probably have to deal with that estate agent again if your offer does not get accepted.
It’s important to take things that are perceived as issues and to purely focus on solutions and to think of how you can help the seller…
Can you exchange contracts whenever suits them?
“Please do not go into a negotiation seeing it as a battle and that it’s ‘you against the seller’.”
Can you ask to include the furniture in your offer, but will you happily let them have the dining room table that was given to them by their mother or father?
Try to think of negotiation like a ‘give and take’ scenario…
There will be times when you ask for less money and where you don’t give anything back in return because you feel that that is what it is worth.
However, there will be times when you can ask for a reduction in the price and you can be as fair as you possibly can be with regards to some of the points that I made above.
Put yourself in the shoes of the seller (and estate agent!) and work out what would be well received from their point of view…
Then, when you make your offer, be explicitly clear about why you are offering what you are offering.
Have you ever found negotiating on a 1-bed property purchase difficult or did it make you feel like it was you vs the seller and estate agent?