It’s been said that in real estate everything is negotiable. But how do you negotiate when hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line? No one wants to lose money on their home sale.

Good news. I’m here to help. My name is Gary Howell and I am a real estate agent in Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio.

The skill of negotiating is the same whether it’s a ten-dollar item, a ten-thousand-dollar item or a one-hundred-thousand-dollar item. The only thing that changes are the terms.

I first learned how to negotiate a long time ago when I took up earning some extra pocket money by flipping garage sale items on Craigslist. (I never haggled the good folks having a garage sale. I don’t like that). What I use to do was to go shopping at garage sales on weekends, find something that appeared to have some value and I would look it up online to see what it might be worth. If the garage sale was asking an amount much lower than its true value, I would just give them what they were asking, but later I would relist the item on Craigslist for its true market value.

But on one of my very first garage sale purchases, I bought two fishing poles. They were both made by Penn. When I looked them up, I saw they were worth much more than the thirty-dollar asking price at the garage sale. So, I bought them and the same day I listed them for sale on Craigslist.

A man responded to the ad and we met in the parking lot of our local grocery store. When I showed him the fishing poles, which I thought looked to be in really nice shape, he proceeded to talk bad about them. He started telling me everything that was wrong with them.

The way that he spoke made me feel as though he were some kind of expert on these types of fishing poles. He made me feel like he was an authority. I inwardly accepted that he was right and I was wrong. I was asking $80 for both, but he convinced me to sell both to him for $25 ($5 less than I had bought them for).

The second that I agreed, he handed me the money, grabbed the poles and literally ran to his car and sped away across the parking lot. As I stood there watching him drive away, thinking about what had just happened, it was then that I began to realize that I had just allowed myself to get ripped off.

I lost money because I didn’t know how negotiating works. He had totally blindsided me and that’s when I really got mad. As I drove back home, I made a vow to myself that I would never let that happen to me ever gain.

Now let’s apply what I learned to real estate negotiations.

Rule #1 – The buyer is always going to point out what’s wrong with your real estate. Your job is to point out everything that’s good and right about it. This is the way negotiations work. The buyer will try to reduce the price by pointing out the flaws, meanwhile you want to keep the price as high as possible by pointing out all the good qualities.

And by the way, when it comes to negotiating real estate, If you hire me as your real estate agent, I will be there to help you and to give you advice on how you should respond to offers that are lower than your asking price and how to effectively counter-offer.

Rule #2 – Don’t let any buyer cause you to feel that their opinions are authoritative. The buyer may talk and act like as if he’s an expert on every little issue that might be present in your house. Don’t let that upset you. Don’t get discouraged. He’s just following rule #1. He’s trying to make the house seem like it’s not worth the asking price.

But remember the seller’s role in rule #1; we are going to speak with confidence about all the things that are good about the property.

Rule #3 – Before you put the house up for sale, let’s take an honest look at what’s wrong with the property. Then we can tactfully disclose these issues in the listing so that prospective buyers can’t discover them and use them as an “Ah-ha” moment to try to low-ball you.

Or, another option may be to repair some issues before the house is listed for sale. I one time walked into a house that was for sale and the wall immediately around the light switch in the children’s bedroom was completely filthy from the thousands of times the child’s dirty hands swiped the light switch. It really left a bad impression, but it didn’t have to be that way because it’s so easy to paint a wall.

However, on that note, if for whatever reason you want to put zero effort into fixing up the house, it’s not a problem, we can merely adjust the asking price accordingly. The way we do that is by determining what the cost of the repairs would be and then subtract that from what the home would otherwise be valued at if those repairs were done.

Rule #4 – Before the negotiations ever start, know exactly what your home is worth and exactly the minimum amount that you would be willing to accept. Then set it firmly in your mind that no matter what is said, no matter what argument they make, you will not go below that minimum, no matter what. Worst case scenario, they can go buy a house somewhere else.

Rule #5 – Always counter offer. You never want to leave money behind. Any offer you get that is less than your asking price should be countered. But this is especially true for low-ball offers. Often sellers will reject low-ball offers outright without a counter. But if you’ve ever gone fishing you know, once you get a fish on the hook, it’s time to real it in. If someone gives you a low-ball offer, they are biting at your bait. The counter offer is what might real them in. It brings them back to the reality of what your home is worth. They can either make a more realistic offer or they can go somewhere else.

With these five rules, you will get the most money for your real estate.

Gary Howell is a real estate agent in Jackson Township Ohio. He specializes in selling residential homes in the Jackson Township area as well as selling farms and land in the greater northeast Ohio area. His business is helping people to sell their home or land and get not only the best customer service, but also the most money possible for their real estate sale. Go here to read more about Gary. To send Gary a quick message, visit his contact page here.