Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Negotiate Financing?

How Do You Negotiate Financing? The final deal point we’ll consider is the financing. It’s important to remember that the very best institutional financing in the real estate world goes to owner-occupants of single-family homes. When you’re working with an investment property, the financing is much less available and usually at a higher price. For … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Negotiate over Deposits?

How Do You Negotiate over Deposits? Deposits, the cleaning and security kind that tenants give to land­ lords to hold during the tenancy, may seem like small potatoes. But in recent years they have become increasingly important. In fact, in some cases they are the deal point around which a sale hinges. How can this … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You “Negotiate” the Rents?

How Do You “Negotiate” the Rents? What should be obvious is that the value depends on at least two things: recent sales prices and the current rent from the property in question. While accurate recent sales prices of comparables should be fairly easy to obtain (call a few agents who deal in income prop­erty), determining … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: Negotiating the Price of Income Property

Negotiate on Investment Property: Negotiating the Price of Income Property There are many different methods of determining the value of an investment property. These include capitalizing the income of the property or determining the return on the actual cash invested. However, the most commonly used “quick method” for real estate income property is the gross … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Appeal an Improvement?

How Do You Appeal an Improvement? When you improve your property by, for example, adding a new room or putting on a new roof, you will likely get a new appraisal. Generally speaking, most counties will reevaluate your property at that time and often will significantly increase its value. Again, appeal—first to the appraiser in … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Challenge a Lender’s Appraisal?

How Do You Challenge a Lender’s Appraisal? There are essentially two methods of challenging a bad (in your opinion) lender’s appraisal. The above example lists one: go to a dif­ferent lender, one who has some reason to see it your way. TRAP Arguing with a lender over the amount of an appraisal is a futile … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: What Do You Negotiate When a Lender’s Appraiser Says “No!”?

What Do You Negotiate When a Lender’s Appraiser Says “No!”? I had a neighbor who, after her husband’s death, decided she wanted to sell a vacation home that she and her husband had owned. She talked to a few brokers, got a feel for the market, and put it up for sale for $550,000. (It … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Keep Personal Property Out of the Deal?

How Do You Keep Personal Property Out of the Deal? There’s another perspective here, and that’s the view of the seller. Thus far we’ve been seeing how a buyer can get a seller to throw in a piece of personal property. But how does a seller keep a buyer from demanding this? The answer is … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How Do You Negotiate to Get Personal Property Included in the Deal?

How to Bargain for Personal Property: How Do You Negotiate to Get Personal Property Included in the Deal? As a buyer, you may fall in love with a piece of personal property just as Rita and Peter did in our example. It could be a beautiful, bell­ shaped glass chandelier in the dining room. Maybe … Read more