5 Negotiating Strategies for Selling a Home

By Mark Spain Real Estate

When it comes to selling a home, negotiating is inevitable. Though it would be ideal to receive your exact asking price right off the bat, most offers will be slightly lower than your listing price to leave room for negotiations. 

With a trusted real estate professional, you can create a game plan for negotiating offers on your home. At Mark Spain Real Estate, our experts offer top-quality negotiating strategies to ensure you’re in the driver’s seat throughout the negotiation process. Read below for our top negotiating strategies for selling a home. 

5 Negotiating Strategies for Selling a Home

Extend A Counteroffer

It’s rare for sellers to accept a buyer’s initial offer if it’s below their asking price. Instead, sellers will counteroffer the buyer’s bid to maximize their profit. As a seller, it’s important to remember that a low offer doesn’t mean your buyer isn’t willing to pay more. Most of the time, buyers extend lower offers with the expectation of back-and-forth negotiations. 

There are several ways to go about counteroffering. You can counteroffer with a bid that’s still below your asking price. This is a sure way to keep your buyer interested and guarantee a sale. However, it isn’t necessarily the best way to maximize your profit.

As a seller, one route you could take is counter offering with your listing price. However, this may only be effective in an extreme seller’s market. Assuming you priced your home correctly from the start, countering with your asking price will demonstrate your confidence about your home’s worth. And while this strategy may make you seem less flexible to buyers, it’s a quick way to filter through lowball offers if you’re in a competitive market.

Reject The Offer

If you’re feeling bold and want to send buyers a clear message, you might reject a buyer’s offer right off the bat. Rather than counteroffering, rejecting an offer sends a strong signal that you won’t accept less than you deserve. Doing so will force buyers to submit a new offer if they’re really serious about your listing. This approach also doesn’t ethically bind you to back-and-forth negotiations with one buyer. Instead, you are free to accept any higher offer that might come along. Knowing this, serious buyers will have to act fast if they are dead set on buying your property.  

Entertain A Bidding War

It’s common to receive multiple offers in a competitive market. After listing your home and hosting an open house, you can expect several offers to come in. If you’re in a competitive market, potential buyers will likely extend higher offers as they expect more than one offer to be on the table. In this case, entertaining a bidding war between your top buyers will maximize your profit. 

Give A Counteroffer With A Cut-Off

Though not illegal, it is considered highly unethical to accept a new offer when you are already negotiating an existing one. That said, it’s often in your best interest to extend counter offers with expiration dates to avoid entertaining multiple buyers at once.

Giving a counteroffer with a cut-off motivates buyers to make quicker decisions and move forward. When giving a deadline, remember how a lengthy negotiation period could affect your sale.

Your home is still effectively off the market even when you have an outstanding counteroffer. If the deal falls through, that time will count towards your home’s days spent on the market, making it less appealing to prospective buyers moving forward. 

Pay Buyers’ Closing Costs

Paying your buyer’s closing costs is standard practice when selling a home. Accounting for roughly 3% of the purchase price, closing costs can do a number on a buyer’s affordability. Covering their closing costs gives your buyer some financial wiggle room and increases your chances of closing. 

However, if you’re concerned with how closing costs will affect your overall profit, you might make closing cost payments contingent on a higher purchase price. Say your listing price is $300,000, and your buyer offers $290,000 with $5,000 for closing costs. In this case, you could counter with a price between $295,000 and $305,000 to compensate for the closing cost payments. 

Sell a Home in Charlotte with Mark Spain Real Estate

Are you selling a home? The industry professionals at Mark Spain Real Estate are here to help every step of the way. Delivering unparalleled customer satisfaction, our team of experienced listing consultants promises a seamless and stress-free selling experience! Check out our Guaranteed Offer Program for the potential to receive a competitive cash offer on your home in only 21 days. Contact our agents today!

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