“
While great negotiators can sometimes turn situations where there is a gap between buyer and seller MAOs, in many cases, the price gap is impossible to overcome and the likelihood of a deal is small. For that reason, we typically like to take one of two approaches to these types of negotiations: Go in with a very low offer (typically at or below your target price) in hopes of shocking the seller into realizing that his property is worth much less than he had thought. If he doesn’t walk away and is still willing to negotiate, there is a chance that he is more highly motivated than you had anticipated, and he may reduce his MAO.
If we wanted to go this route for the example above, we’d likely pick an opening price bid somewhere in the $140,000 to $150,000 range.
Communicate to the seller that you don’t want to insult him with a low price and that you don’t plan to make an offer. The seller will either thank you for your honesty (in which case there was no deal to be made), or the seller will ask you what your price would have been. If the seller is interested in what you would have offered, that’s an indication that he may be more motivated than we suspected, and again, may be willing to move off his MAO.
If the seller asks you what your offer would have been, we typically will present the offer exactly as we did in the first example above, but indicate that we might have a bit of flexibility in that price.
”
”
J. Scott (The Book on Negotiating Real Estate: Expert Strategies for Getting the Best Deals When Buying & Selling Investment Property (Fix-and-Flip 3))