The other side of this table
The listing agent negotiates for a living.You are doing this once.
That asymmetry is not a reason to be anxious. It is a reason to know where a buyer actually has leverage — and to use it in the window where it exists, because most of it expires quietly.
The process
Five stages. Each has a moment where asking still works.
Leverage is perishable. The list below is less about what happens than about when it is still possible to change it.
Stage 01
Before you look at anything
A fully underwritten pre-approval is worth more than a pre-qualification letter, and it costs the same. It is what lets a seller take a slightly lower number from you over a higher one from someone who might not close.
Once you are writing an offer, this is already fixed.
Stage 02
The showing
The agent at the open house works for the seller, and anything you say in the kitchen about how much you love the place is information they are paid to use. Being pleasant and being unguarded are different things.
Nothing said out loud can be taken back.
Stage 03
Writing the offer
Price is one line. Closing date, possession, what conveys, who pays for the survey, how much due diligence money is at risk and for how long — every one of those is negotiable, and several of them are worth more than a price reduction.
This is the widest the table ever gets. It narrows from here.
Stage 04
Due diligence
The inspection is the second negotiation, and it is not one question. A repair list can be repaired, credited, declined, or split line by line — and a credit at closing is often worth more to a buyer than the repair itself.
When the due diligence period ends, so does this.
Stage 05
Appraisal and the run to closing
If the appraisal comes in under contract price there is more than one move, and which ones exist depends on how the contract was written weeks earlier. This is where offer-stage decisions either help or cost.
Whatever the contract left you is what you have.
One transaction
Price, cash, and position in one contract.
A resale purchase where three separate things were negotiated into a single contract. None of them would have been available a week later.
- Below list price
- $20,000
- Seller-paid concessions
- $22,210
- Immediate equity at closing
- $34,000
Results vary by property, seller, and market conditions. Past transaction outcomes are not a prediction or guarantee of results in any future transaction.
What is actually askable
The part nobody hands you.
Most of what a buyer can ask for is not price, and it is not obvious from the outside which items exist on any given house. The full list is written out on The 19 Things Besides Price You Can Negotiate, ungated — read it before you write an offer rather than after.
Next step
Call before you write the offer.
The offer is the widest the table ever gets. Ten minutes beforehand is worth more than any conversation after it is signed.
Start here
A few things about what you are looking at.
Property type, where, and roughly when. Then your details. Enough to know which levers are plausibly on your table.
Step 2 of 3