How can you be expected to make price offer decisions in a vacuum? Stout Associates Realtors® spends a great amount of time and effort in collecting market data to help our buyers in their price negotiations. This data involves not only sold property prices by neighborhood, but also current listing pricing to determine the competitive nature of the market.

This data is very thorough, and it’s call a Comparative (or Competitive) Market Analysis. There are two parts, the comparison of the property you’re considering to similar properties recently sold in the nearby area. This gives us a firm grip on what has happened in the near past, but by nature it is “past” data, thus possibly not accurate for the market as it is when you’re in negotiations. We then do another CMA process on the currently listed properties most like the one under consideration and in the same neighborhood or nearby. This gives us a current market snapshot so that we can adjust our valuation model and our offer to reflect the current market situation.

While it’s not always legally possible to determine why someone is selling, there are things we can glean from their listing and price activity that will allow us to help you to negotiate from a position of strength.

Many real estate price negotiations involve multiple counter offers and a lot of back–and–forth. We’re with you with each counter offer to adjust your negotiation strategy accordingly. Because we can’t know the seller’s financial limitations in many deals, some buyers are elated when they cut a major low-priced deal on a home, but then after inspections they hit a brick wall in negotiations with the seller related to repairs. The negotiation to purchase a home isn’t over with the price on the contract, and it’s best to know that a real deal at the front end could result in less flexibility after inspections in the repairs discussion.