Housing negotiations

House purchasing is proving to be more difficult than we anticipated, due to the limited supply of straight forward traditional sales. After pulling our offer on the bank owned property last week, we saw a house we LOVED that was short sale. Sometimes these are doable, and we were hoping this might be. Unfortunately the process required for this one sounded a little like Alice's trip down the rabbit hole, with places along the way to deposit money that you might never see again, and a promise that you won't see the light of day again for at least 6 months. Happy house purchasing!

I've decided that this would be so much easier if we could just do this Chinese bargaining style. If we could sit down with the seller, it might look something like this:

Us: How much do you want for the house?
Seller: $1,000,000 dollars.
Us: Are you kidding me? That's too expensive (we start to get up from the table)
Seller: No wait! Ok, (pulls out a calculator, glances around and types in $600,000).
Us: . . . . .
Seller: Ok, ok ($500,000)
Us: That's just still too expensive.
Seller: Ok you say how much.
Us: We were thinking like $250,000
Seller: What?? No! I'll lose money.
Us: (start to get up from the table)
Seller: Ok, ok, listen friend. Give me your best price.
Us: $250,000
Seller: No, please, best price. Ok, $400,000.
Us: (walk away from the table)
Seller: Ok, $300,000. $270,000!! Ok $250,000!!!!
Us: Great. We'll take it.

Done.