Buyer Mistake No. 79
We Fell in love with the
house and
just HAD to have it.
Lesson: Keep your
love to yourself. Put your options on the table.
In his best-selling book You Can Get Anything You Want , Roger Dawson, the world-renowned
negotiating expert, tells how a negotiation slipup cost him $30,000 when he was buying his
family's present home. Roger writes that one day while teaching his daughter to
drive in the secluded hills of Southern California, he spotted the house of his dreams.
Everything about the house was perfect, he says, and it was for sale.
Posing as a reluctant, if not altogether indifferent, buyer, Roger relates how he plotted
his negotiation strategy - only to see it evaporate when his wife and daughter returned to
look at the house without him. They oohed and aahed over every feature, and by the time
they were through with their tour, "they had demolished my reluctant buyers
plan," says Roger.
It also didn't help matters when his wife told the sellers Roger really thought their
house was wonderful. At that point the sellers knew the Dawsons were hooked.
With a ticket price of $15, Roger says many people think a tour of Hearst
Castle at San Simeon is expensive. But he calculated that one house tour by his wife
and daughter cost him $30,000.00.
When talking with sellers, you've got to walk a fine line. Yes, you want to show
interest, develop a cooperative, problem-solving attitude, and prevent critical remarks
that may offend. Yet you can't go overboard with lavish praise. Nor do you
want to tell yourself, "This is the perfect house, we've simply got to have it."
In other words, don't shut out other options - either in your own mind or in the eyes of
the sellers. When the sellers believe you've eliminated other houses from
consideration, they'll naturally use that information to bolster their own position.
Should you tell yourself, "Nothing else will do," you abandon
the strongest negotiating power any buyer has - the willpower to walk away from the deal.
Sometimes emotions do get the better of us. But keep in mind that once
you relinquish your walk away willpower, you might as well hand the sellers a blank
contract and let them fill in the numbers.
This Homebuyers Tip was excerpted from:
The 106 Common Mistakes Homebuyers Make, by Gary Eldred, Ph.D., John Wiley Sons,
Inc., 1994.
ISBN# 047131191X
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