How to deal with offers: Accept, Refuse or USE!

How to deal with offers: Accept, Refuse or USE!

Here’s a real life example as to why you shouldn’t be too fixated on the price you want. I get that it’s important to sell for the highest price. I’ve dedicated the last 5 years of my life (so far) helping clients achieve this. BUT… there’s a saying… ‘A bird in the hand’. Read on…

Last week (at the time of writing) I had a call from a lady (i'll call her Laura for these purposes) who has been sat on the market for 8 months. She wanted to up-size to a larger house and someone recommended that she get in touch with me. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: How is the marketing going?

Laura: Ok but viewings have slowed down

Me: What price are you hoping to achieve?

Laura: I won’t let it go for a anything less than €320,000 

Me: Why’s that?

Laura: Because I know what my house is worth and I’ve spent thousands on it

Me: Totally understandable and fair enough. Have you had any offers to date?

Laura: Yea I had an offer of €310,000 3 weeks ago but refused it.

Me: Did you use it?

Laura: What do you mean?

Me: When you get an offer, you have 3 options. 1. Accept it. 2. Refuse it. 3. Use it. People assume only the first 2 are options. By use it, I mean go out viewing potential purchase properties as you are actually in a VERY strong position with a buyer behind you and make offers. The aim would be to make your perceived ‘loss’ of €10,000, a €15,000 ‘gain’. You see, if you receive an offer slightly under ‘what you want’ but that buyer enables you to save a lot more on your purchase or on currency exchange fees, maybe because the people you want to buy from are divorcing or relocating or just don’t want to lose a house they want to buy or because it just happens that the euro is down relative to pound or another currency… then that’s a good outcome right?

Laura: I’d never looked at it like that.

So, try not fixate on ‘what you want’ rather fixate on the ‘ultimate goal’.

Christos Nikolaou

Author: Christos Nikolaou

BEng Mechanical Engineering, MSc Real Estate, ETEK Property Valuer, Register and Licensed Real Estate Agent.

Christos Nikolaou is the founder and Managing Director of Property Canvas, he holds a license as an Estate Agent from the Association of Real Estate Agents of Cyprus and he is a registered Property Valuer in the Technical and Scientific Chamber of Cyprus (ETEK). He is the author of our “How to deal with offers: Accept, Refuse or USE!” and is a certified advance negotiator.

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