What You Can Do to Have a Better Negotiating Posture Keep in touch. Immediately reply to any calls or letters from the lender, no matter when they come. Never let calls go unanswered. Try to get out from under the mortgage by selling the property. Clearly show the lender that your financial condition is such … Read more
The Key to Negotiating Out of Foreclosure The single most important point to understand in this example is that Jerry and Pat constantly communicated with the lender. Communication was the key to their ability to get payments delayed and then get an alternative to foreclosure. Consider that if Jerry had never called the lender, had … Read more
What Can You Do When You’re in Default? Most of us today know of someone who has lost his or her house to foreclosure in the not too distant past. It has become that common. However, here’s a story that’s been told less often. Jerry and Pat had just bought a comfortable upscale home in … Read more
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
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
Negotiating a Sales Agreement: The Financing Contingency As we saw in the opening example, negotiating strict time-limit contingencies on the buyer for obtaining needed financing should help protect the seller. These days sellers are always concerned (with some good reason) about buyers who talk a good deal, but later can’t come up with the money. … Read more
Negotiating a Sales Agreement: Dealing with Time Time can also be a deal point. In post 2, we saw why time was important as a negotiating tool. Now we’ll consider a specific application of time in the sales agreement: the date of occupancy. When—the exact date—the seller turns the home over to the buyer is … Read more
Negotiate the Commission: How Does the Commission Impact the Agent’s Role in Selling? What does an agent do for you? A good active real estate agent who makes a concerted effort to sell your property will do the following. Besides the obvious sales tools such as placing advertising in news papers, holding open houses, putting … Read more
Learn to Act: Question Authority “Question authority” is an old phrase out of the 1960s when the flower children believed that everyone over 30 was the enemy. Of course, all of the flower children are now over 60, so I suppose it no longer applies in a sociological setting. But it does have a special … Read more
Control Time: Set a Deadline If you’ve ever watched a telethon fund raiser, you quickly realize that 90 percent of the money is raised in the last hour. That’s regardless of how long the telethon lasts, whether it’s 5 hours or 50. It isn’t until it gets down to the actual deadline that people contribute. … Read more
