Now that your agent has submitted the offer, the ball is in the seller’s court.  Although it doesn’t happen all of the time, usually the seller will respond with a counter offer.   You may decide to counter offer their counteroffer and so or the negotiation may end with just one or two counter offers.  Again, there really is no rule of thumb on this as every negotiation is different because all of the players are people, and all people are different.  Where you and your agent may have started out with a certain negotiation strategy, the skilled agent will help you to interpret the counter offer of the other side and, based on that, your strategy may change drastically.  This is why it is so important to have skilled negotiator as your agent who has experience in interpreting different types of tactics and personalities; this helps ensure that you will you get what you want.

Price is not the only point of negotiation in a real estate transaction.  Some of the most common points of negotiation are:

• Purchase Price
• Closing Costs
• Closing Date
• Due Diligence Time Frames
• Contingency Time Frames
• Items included in the sale of the property
• Repairs
• Allowances
• Special Stipulations
• Amount of earnest money
• Home Warranty
• Termite Bond

Just to name a few, there are other negotiation points that may come into play, but this varies across home negotiations.