Things You Can Negotiate When You Are Buying A Home

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Things You Can Negotiate When You Are Buying A Home

19 May 2017
 Categories: Real Estate, Blog


When you find the right home to buy and are ready to make an offer, you will have to carefully think about how much to offer and if there are any contingencies you would like to add to the offer. Your real estate agent will assist you with this and may suggest negotiating on the deal by using some or all of the following strategies.

Ask the seller to repair things

The easiest way to negotiate when buying a house is offering a lower price than what the seller is asking, but this is not always the best option. Instead of doing this, you may want to offer a price that is relatively close to the current asking price, and you could negotiate in other ways. A good place to start with your negotiations is asking the seller to fix, repair, or replace certain things.

For example, if the carpet is old and stained, you could ask the seller to replace it or give you an allowance to replace it yourself. A seller might be quicker to agree to this than to an offer that is much lower than the asking price.

Request that the buyer pay your points

You could also use the strategy of asking the seller to pay the points on your loan. If you express extreme interest in this home but need a way to reduce your monthly payments for the home, the seller might agree to pay your points. Paying points on a loan reduces the interest rate on the loan, and this will cause the payment amounts to decrease. One point typically offers a 0.25% decrease in interest rate and will cost around 1% of the total loan amount.

Ask for assistance with other closing costs

The other option you could choose is asking the seller to cover some of your closing costs. The seller will be responsible for paying a commission to a real estate agency, but you will have a lot of other closing costs to pay. If the seller will agree to this, you may not need to lower the amount you offer on the home by much, yet this option would help you save money.

There are many ways to negotiate when buying a house, and using these strategies can often be more effective than offering a lower price. To learn more about this, you may want to visit a local real estate agency today, or contact a home builder like Fischer Homes!