Be Awake
Be awake. No one negotiates well when they are tired. And yet many residential real estate negotiations happen after work, in the evening, and sometimes late at night. Try to avoid this (on your side).
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Clients cannot see houses if they are working. So brokers show a lot of property during evenings and weekends. That is to be expected. And some clients cannot break away during their work day for any non-work activity. I mean some clients will not even return your phone call until after 5:00 PM. So if they are buying a home for themselves, this process largely takes place at night and on weekends.
So a house pops up and your buyer clients want to see it…this evening after work. So you schedule a 5:30 PM showing and meet the clients at the house. This is the, what, twelfth house they’ve seen. And they like it. Sometimes they want to sleep on it and sometimes they want to make an offer. Tonight. So you write it up, have the client write some checks, and send it along to the listing broker. By this time it is after 8:00 PM.
Now if I happen to be that listing broker, it’s easy. That’s the end of it for the day. I am a morning person. I think most clearly early in the day. And I am going to deal with anything serious then. I may send the offer to the sellers, but I add: Let’s discuss this in the morning.
But too often what we see is that a full scale real estate negotiation breaks out at 9:00 PM. Nine, because the sellers went out to dinner after work and just got in. So we are going to negotiate a $500,000 business deal starting at nine o’clock in the evening. I personally just find that to be insane.
And yet it happens all the time. And sure, sometimes, there are other offers involved. And the buyer fears, justifiably, that the seller may take another offer…tonight.
Questions: Why is the seller in such a rush? And why does the buyer panic? Come on, by now, you know the answer: Their brokers tell them to.
The listing broker tells the seller, look, if we don’t get them locked down, the buyer may find something else. And the buyer’s broker tells the buyer, we don’t want them to take another offer. And if there is another offer, that broker is telling her buyers the same thing.
And look, you are not going to get the brokers to behave sensibly. Most will gladly work the deal until well after midnight and into the wee hours. Remember the brokers’ priorities: Fast and easy and not necessarily best.
And so, even if one of the three parties is reasonable, they have to worry about the other two.
Anyway, this is the dynamic. You get the idea.
I would urge you, whichever side you are on, to…have a glass of wine. Pick it up in the morning. But like I said, the other brokers are going nuts; could you possibly miss out on this house or buyer? Yes. We discussed this possibility in our chapter Be Deliberate.
But in addition to setting a deliberate pace, I think we should also just ask the simple question: Are we awake? And I don’t mean merely awake after dinner and a busy day at the office. I mean, are we fully awake? Bright-eyed and clearheaded? Are we awake enough to be negotiating a $500,000 deal with numerous moving pieces?
Let me put it differently: What if this was not your home that we were negotiating. Let’s say, your boss gave you the task of negotiating the purchase of a $500,000 piece of equipment. Or, disposing of it. Either way. Would you, would anyone, deal with that at nine o’clock at night?
Yes, some might. They might take an equipment vendor out to dinner and negotiate the deal over cocktails. But they better be awake and clearheaded, because tomorrow morning they are going to have to explain that deal to their boss. The smarter thing to do is to schedule a meeting with the vendor for the next day. Skip drinks and dinner and get a good night’s sleep.
But I think that’s a problem with residential real estate: We are only accountable to ourselves. So fine: Hold yourself accountable and be smart. And don’t allow your broker, or the other broker(s), to pull you into their frenzy.