With the inventory of available properties on the market being tight today in many locations, especially when it comes to industrial and multifamily properties, buyers are not only faced with difficulty in finding the property they want to purchase, but they’re also oftentimes faced with paying prices that may seem too high to them.
Keeping this in mind, if you get to a point in negotiations on a property where the buyer is hesitating about moving forward on the final bottom-line price that the seller is now willing to sell the property for, I’m going to give you a statement to utilize that may be helpful to you.
This statement is known as a “reframe”, from the field of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and it most specifically utilizes the approach known as “future pacing”, where you take the person mentally out into the future, and have them experience how good they’ll be feeling at that time, because of the decision they’ve made today.
So with this in mind, here is the type of statement that you can then utilize in this situation:
“Bill, we know that the market is tight, and we’ve had great difficulty even finding this property for you to consider purchasing. You plan on buying this property and holding it for another 10-20 years or more, and even though they’re asking you to pay $5.00 per square foot more than you’d like to, how much more do you think this property will be be worth 10-20 years from now? In addition, in looking back over the last 20 years or so, properties have doubled and sometimes even tripled in value, so how would you feel now, in looking back, and still arguing that you may have paid $5.00 per square foot too much for a property back then?
Wouldn’t that be ridiculous…to even be concerned with this today?
So similar to this situation, Bill, real estate has always proven itself to be a great long-term investment, and how do you think you’ll feel 20 years from now, having experienced a solid amount of appreciation in this property, and feeling thrilled that you now own it?”