I gave private PM response to Cuse recommending email before I saw these replies. And your thinking is exactly why I recommended. He will be across the table from folks who negotiate for a living. We want to claw out every advantage for our side. But I am in violent agreement with your thinking, most folks don’t really think through flow/pace/deadlines etc. It’s the classic, “what’s your budget for this purchase?” “when do you need to make a decision?”
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lol no that’s much worse. Now we have 2 nearly identical topics with nearly identical names in the same category.
I think generally people want to discuss, a) their own personal investments, and b) the economy as a whole. Topics titles and categorization should reflect that as much as possible.
Redacted for privacy.
By the way, it’s worth adding that I probably overpaid the first time. I had been looking for apartments for a while, they wouldn’t budge on the price and we were excited about the location, so we took it at the listed price. At the time I didn’t know how many vacancies they had. So, anyway, even my current price was probably too high then, let alone now.
Burn it all down and start from scratch.
One thread in Politics - The Economy
One thread in Chitchat - Personal Finance
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The challenge with this split is how to classify stock discussion, which is a high volume topic. Like, nobody who’s interested in the economy gives a shit about whether I think Berkshire Hathaway is a good buy right now. But if we have stock discussion in personal finance, it’s going to drown out topics like this negotiating one, mortgage refinancing questions, FSA accounts, etc. That’s already happening and what I’m hoping to avoid.
Clearly I have done more harm than good.
As a general comment and I welcome feedback, one first negotiation principle: Never get emotional if you can avoid it. Regarding the unreasonable offer of 38% over par, it’s an anchor, a specific tactic to create emotion and lower your ability to be rational and use logic. So I know folks are like f-that offer and of course I agree! The offer is designed to smoke you out, but don’t get upset, it’s a game. And I know its not a game, but the closer you can get to treating any negotiation like a fun and interesting game, the better off you will be. It’s analagous to tilt in poker. Don’t chase 7-2o cuz the drooler across the table just dragged a big pot and you haven’t seen a playable hand in 2 hours.
Not directed at Cuse, intended as general guidance.
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I agree with this. I think we need a separate thread for this and for stocks, and if we want another one about the Economy we can do that, too. There’s a lot of overlap, but I think combining any two of them will do a disservice to the people who get the most value out of those topics.
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Just for kicks, I checked some of the ledgers for our retail tenants. It’s about what I figured, the more successful restaurants before all this are still paying, but the less well off and retail definitely are not. That was about the same story before Covid though. Extremely large national drugstore and pharmacy definitely still paying as well as most tenants in general. Overall fairly surprised.
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We’re all guilty now, I think.
iirc, the main reason some of the personal finance stuff got pushed out is because discussions about exploiting the pandemic for personal gain was rubbing some people the wrong way, justifiably so I think. The unmet demand is from people who want to discuss the economy without hearing about the market gambools of upper middle class people who clearly aren’t at risk of any real hardship.
This is probably the best advice ITT. If you do nothing else, learn how to mirror.
ETA: Mirroring is covered extensively in the book as is the “accusation audit”. Combined with asking open ended questions, these three tactics give you 80% of what you need to negotiate very effectively. And really, most of the remaining 20% is just practicing these techniques until you can do them cold.
What are open-ended questions going to get me from a landlord that’s a property management company? I feel like what they need is my money, what they want is more of it, and what would make them happy is as much of it as they can possibly squeeze out of me.
I guess maybe like they might not want to go lower because of a risk of non-payment so the trade off might be a bigger deposit or paying a couple months up front? Something like that?
Some examples:
What’s driving the 38% increase?
How will you handle your 25% vacancy rate?
How do you expect me to pay a 38% increase while there’s a plague about?
What’s the standard Cuse discount for being a loyal renter?
Wow, 38% increase, that’s fascinating, how deep is your current renter waiting list?
They may say f-you to a lot of these and these questions may look like time wasters but the point is to get them talking and solve your problem for them.
As @boredsocial talked about, in many negotiations with my smaller vendors, I would simply laugh politely and say, “How do you expect me to do that?” go quiet and supplier begins to offer discount for example.
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They are in a situation where they can get X from you or 0 for one additional marginal unit at a moment when nearly everyone is gaining inventory not losing it.
There’s no risk of nonpayment here as you’re a tenant that has been paying them up to now. They need you much worse than you need them.
Honestly if it doesn’t bother you you should definitely flip the table here.
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Hahaha these are so fucking good. “Wow, 38% increase, that’s fascinating, how deep is your current renter waiting list?” had me actually laughing.
In keeping with my control oriented style where I never ask any questions that aren’t traps I would probably just tell them how it is and mic drop rather than ask questions. All of these questions are funny ways to get to fuck you though lol.
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Dear Cuse’s Landlord,
Thank you for getting back to me regarding the proposed rent renewal.
I’ve reviewed the offer and noticed that you are asking for a 38% increase. How do you expect me to do that? As you know, COVID has changed a lot of things. Times are tough and we’re all going to have to tighten our belts. Based on this proposed 38% increase, I’ll look into other options. Please feel free to reach back out if you care to improve the current offer on the table,
Regards,
Cuse
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What would that look like? Here’s what they sent me. One thing that’s weird is my lease runs through the end of September, but they’re saying if I sign this saying no and send it back, my lease will end in 60 days? That seems crazy, like they want to kick me out early? Or is it the opposite, if I don’t sign it and send it back it will go month-to-month? Anyway I click the link to the website and that’s where I see the offer.
Good afternoon,
We hope you are enjoying the pool! If you have not had a chance to check out the pool and need a wristband, please stop by the management office or the front desk. You will need to sign two forms before we issue you a wristband and each leaseholder must pick up their own wristbands.
We will be passing out your renewal offer as your lease is coming to an end in September. If you are not home to receive your physical copy, you can also see the electronic copy on WEBSITE.
If you have any questions or want to discuss staying another year, please email us at EMAIL so that we can schedule a phone call or time to meet in person. If you already know that you will not be renewing, please provide us with your forwarding address and primary reason for not renewing.
Please keep in mind that if you are not renewing, your lease will end 60 days from the date we receive your renewal offer completely signed by all leaseholders. We are accepting electronic signatures at this time due to Covid; all signatures just must be on the same piece of paper.
Continue staying safe and healthy and have a great day!
This is like the absolute least confrontational direction you can go… and I hate it because it lets them sink their anchor and work down in small increments. I want to pull their anchor and set my own (deeply unreasonable of course) anchor.
People like this deserve hardball every time they get it honestly. I dislike them and avoid working with them on principle. They are the kinds to always find new ways to nickle and dime you on both what they do for you and what they try to charge you. Death by a thousand cuts. If you weren’t already a tenant I wouldn’t even be recommending a counter offer. They tend to lure you in with a deceptively good offer and then renegotiate the second they have any leverage at all. Trump’s style of operating personifies this actually.
If this was an offer from one of the other places you shopped my answer would probably be a gif of someone smoking a blunt or something.
Total tangent to that… I have a huge pet peeve with literally anyone who ever complains about ‘professionalism’. It is almost always the defense of some box checking mediocrity trying to cover up their own incompetence. Imagine this person gets angry about the blunt smoking gif and calls me unprofessional… that’s going to spring my rant about professionalism being the refuge of incompetence.
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Great point! I can tell I have ring rust from not doing this in a while. I missed the CRUCIAL step! To your point, letter needs my anchor:
Based on current market conditions, I could agree to a rent of (.5*current). Once we are in agreement, I look forward to signing the papers. blah blah blah.
Yeah that needs work. I’m going off the cuff right now.
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Pretty sure we are gonna be sweating 65k-70k today, already over 30k and barely anything has reported