This is how I bought a car on craigslist. I was looking for a $3000 sedan and literally everything on craigslist is priced $500 over kbb value so I just started emailing people like a total asshole “hey can you tell me the real number and stop wasting my fucking time i actually need a car” or “wow is your car made of magic why do you want $3800 for a car with a $3300 kbb value?!” and finally someone actually emailed me back like “sure i’ll take $3000 come on over and look at it”. i dunno why but i was so pissed off at the time at all these fucking scammers trying to pass off their 2003 camry as a like new top 1% kbb rated car and i just started messaging random people telling them to fuck off basically.
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Follow @boredsocial advice is what I meant. Make your first offer stupid low. @boredsocial is right, you have AA preflop here. When I referred to the range, I meant when they come back with a counteroffer.
I propose we take it a step at a time. Again, I’m super lazy so I would just offer 25% of current rent without any justifications, “I received your offer and find it absurd in this current rental market. How do you expect me to pay 38% over current rent? I think 25% * current rent is reasonable. Please send over written acceptance at your earliest convenience as time is of the essence for me to find a new apartment.”
Use some variant of this based on your writing style and use @boredsocial as a backup to this approach. Again, cuz I’m lazy.
ETA: I am sensing that you have concerns based on above posts that they will laugh you out of the door. Trust me they won’t. They will act like they will, but they won’t. Remember, you need to anchor them just like they are trying to anchor you. Stand tall, stand firm. Be assertive.
ETA: I don’t know if 25% is right. It would be for me, but it should be a number that you can stand by. Either that or you have to do a market analysis and we need to calibrate your initial offer based on those numbers.
ETA: For you to get a great deal, you WILL need to be prepared to move. For any meaningful deal on goods and services, you must make suppliers compete against each other. Sucks, but it is the reality.
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So for a market analysis, with < 30 minutes of looking, I can find 2br houses or townhomes in the suburbs listed for $1,400 to $1,600. There are two big apartment buildings within a few blocks that are their direct competition. One has 2br units listed for $2,100 to $3,000. The other has 2br starting from $2,510 with one month free, so that’s $2,300. Both appear to have a ton of availability as well. The second one, which I like more, has 1br with a den at $2,025 and one month free, so that’s $1,856 before I try to negotiate.
So I guess if we frame it as a fair price for a 2br is about $2,300, but extenuating circumstances make my fair price more like $2,000, then they are $1800 over that and going $1,300 under it is not crazy. It still literally makes me feel uncomfortable to offer $700/mo for like a high end apartment that lists over $3,000. But, they made me an offensive offer going actually more than $100/mo over the listed rate on the website.
Scenarios using Ackerman bargaining method:
Scenario 1: Normal Market Conditions:
Target price $2,805
65% First round
85% Counter
95% Counter
100% BATNA, walk away if not met
Scenario 2: COVID Nightmare Reality Pricing (Pegged to your market analysis)
Target price $2,300
65% First round ($1,495)
85% Counter
95% Counter
100% BATNA, walk away if not met
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If it makes you feel gross you can definitely offer 1500 and still be in ‘they’ll never take this’ territory. It’s suboptimal but not by very much and you get the same result 99.9% of the time (the .01 is when they randomly say yes 1 out of 1000 times lol).
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So that’s starting at $1,495.
So it seems like you and boredsocial agree that something in the neighborhood of 50% of current rent is about right. Might as well go $1,400.
Definitely appreciate all this help guys, and I’m enjoying learning about this. Feels like it’s going to save me thousands of dollars lifetime on rent, houses, cars, etc.
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Yes, I think reasonable approaches are converging around $1495. Now go rip their heads off! 
ET: Remember, If they act like you just shot their dog, you are doing it right. lol
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I think you should add the 99 cents too because corporations love that shit. You can have me back at $1495.99 take it or leave it.
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Yes, that is a good tactic, but save it for the second or third counter offer. “Ok landlord, I’ve gone through my budget with a fine tooth comb and based on that, I can offer $666.66, but no higher.”
This sets them up to think that the number is legit like you actually did some legit pencil whipping. IME, this first offer is almost never taken and so you want to save this psyop tactic for later in the process.
Round decimals out to the election date if you’re feeling frisky.
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“I can do exactly XXXX.XX but literally not a penny higher” after some loud typing is effective yeah.
I can confirm that this is funny:
“One sec, let me check if we can make that rate work.” from r/FreightBrokers
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I nodded and smiled and thought that’s prettay good, prettay good. lol
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OMG that was on the nose. So great.
If you don’t mind my asking, how much of your time is spent prospecting versus inbound repeat business? And may I assume that your pricing skews towards commodity?
I’m easily the world’s worst negotiator. Probably because I have a mild phobia with confrontation and awkward situations. I’ve left so much money on the table in my life.
I’m already dreading selling my condo (in a year hopefully if covid goes away). But maybe I’ll get lucky and it will be one of those bidding situation things. Also condo is easy I guess because you don’t have to do it in person.
My brother works for Delta. A few weeks before the shutdowns, he moved halfway across the country for a different position in the company. Obviously, shit’s been rough for him. They wanted people to take voluntary severance because they needed to cut a ton of jobs, but he couldn’t get any information as to how safe/unsafe his position was and what-not.
After waiting as long as he could, he opted to roll the dice and not take the package. I haven’t talked to him yet about the decision, but I would imagine he feels pot committed right now after just moving, getting a new apartment, etc. He’s also has a nice job of some importance and authority and has an excellent, lengthy track record at Delta, so he probably feels like he’s not at the top of the layoff list. I would guess he also figures that getting a new job wouldn’t be easy, so might as well see if he can hold onto this one.
It’s been hard in my household with all this, but man, I don’t envy him right now (except that he has a lot of money in the bank being single with no kids).
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Yes, that’s a super tough situation. Normally, I would say take the package as it’s usually going to be the best deal, but with everything you mentioned, makes the decision hella murky.
Will you use a RE agent or do it yourself? I know zero about selling a condo, but all sales boils down to similar core concepts so I’m sure we can give you some guidance when the time comes. But if you can set up multiple interested parties bidding against each other, that will be great.
As mentioned above ITT, select the communication method best suited to your negotiation style. @boredsocial likes face to face (maybe it was phone?), while I used email a lot more (which allowed me to control flow but was also a requirement due to the number of suppliers in my portfolio). I hated the phone because I had to react on the spot and it gave the supplier the advantage of surprise.
I spend almost no time prospecting anymore. There’s a lot of it to start up though.
Pricing is interesting. Basically my job is to take freight from my customers and source trucks for it. First there’s a whole metagame at the customer level and then there’s another one to actually find the truck… half the game is to not be a commodity to the customer but to treat the truck like a commodity lol.
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I would sell the condo now if that was an option. It probably won’t be worth as much in a year I’m guessing. I would argue that for literally any piece of real estate in the country tbh. If someone will give you what’s getting done right now you’re doing great.
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