Making a low-ball offer can be a scary thought. Too low and the sellers don’t trust you when you increase it, too high and you may leave a lot of money on the table.
Let me show you a neat trick that works almost every time.
It’s how to make an offer that you can back out of.
It’s really hard to go in someone’s house, sit there and talk to them, look at their house and shoot a number at them.
You throw a number out at them and if you make a hard line in the sand that you can’t back up from, it’s going to really be hard to retreat from and offer more.
I know you’re thinking in your head, “I know their house is worth 120. but I want to offer him 80. How do I offer 80 and be able to change my offer somewhat without making them angry and making myself look like a jerk?
Here’s what you do. When you are talking and you get to the point where you want to say, “here’s what I can offer you” add the word today to what you’re going to offer the seller. So instead of saying your house is worth 80,000 or I can give you 80,000 just add today to that. Say, “Look, Mr Seller, I can give you $80,000 today”.
I have an old friend of mine that will pull out a checkbook and act like he is doing math. And then he will say, “Okay, today I can give you $84,671” and just look at them. It was really quite comical.
But anyway, why you say, “I can give you $80,000 today”, is if they balk at that and start to blow up, you can say, “Please understand, I’d love to give you more, but that’s all I can give you today.”
Then follow with “Now, if we can work together and you can work with me on this, maybe I can figure out another way to get you some more money. Um, maybe I can sell my car and I can get you another $5,000, would that work? Or would you be willing to hold a note for $20,000?”
There’s a lot of options you go with from there, but if you make it so that you’re not putting the line in the sand and saying, “here’s what I think your house is worth”, you put that back on you saying, here’s what I can do today. It takes all that bad smell off you and puts it out there as just being circumstance. It makes you a friendly third party to the deal.
So, try that, I think you’re really like it. It’s something I always do when I’m sitting with a seller.
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney or CPA. The content herein is merely opinion, and should in no way be considered legal or financial advice. Please seek professional legal and financial advice for your specific situation.
