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

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: What Is Personal Property?

How to Bargain for Personal Property: What Is Personal Property? It’s important to understand the technical distinction between real and personal property. Real properly refers to the land and anything attached to the land, including the house, fences, separate garage, sheds, and so forth. Personal property generally refers to anything that you can take with … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: How to Bargain for Personal Property

How to Bargain for Personal Property Often buyer and seller will negotiate over more than just the house itself. At stake may be a dining room chandelier, a refrigerator or stove, a washer and dryer. Even children’s outdoors swings may be up for grabs. I recently sold a home in which I had put an … Read more

Tips and Traps When Negotiating Real Estate: Mortgage Buy Downs

Negotiating with a Builder: Mortgage Buy Downs In the days of higher interest rates (as happens periodically), the reason that builders can’t sell their homes is that people can’t qual­ify for mortgages. As an inducement to purchase, therefore, some­ times builders will be willing to negotiate a buy down. In a buy down, the builder … Read more