The Cellar - View Single Post - Do Car Dealerships really pull this stuff?

Undertoad · 03-15-2010, 10:19 AM

There aren't a lot of things in your life that you buy for over $10,000.

One thing I bought is a house. Like almost every real estate deal, it was a multi-step haggle. My house was bought from the previous owner for like $15,000 less than they offered.

The real estate haggle was well understood by people who looked into real estate. You learned that every house was priced 10% over what sellers really wanted. You learned that houses could sit on the market for a year before purchase if the offer price wasn't appropriate.

So, my theory is that all highly expensive deals result in some level of haggle or bureaucracy intended to wrangle more money out of the deal. There is merely too much money on the table, and too many people motivated to offer full price to catch the sucker bets. And the haggle doesn't have to be painful if people research how the deal will generally be structured etc.

03-15-2010, 10:19 AM	#29
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	There aren't a lot of things in your life that you buy for over $10,000. One thing I bought is a house. Like almost every real estate deal, it was a multi-step haggle. My house was bought from the previous owner for like $15,000 less than they offered. The real estate haggle was well understood by people who looked into real estate. You learned that every house was priced 10% over what sellers really wanted. You learned that houses could sit on the market for a year before purchase if the offer price wasn't appropriate. So, my theory is that all highly expensive deals result in some level of haggle or bureaucracy intended to wrangle more money out of the deal. There is merely too much money on the table, and too many people motivated to offer full price to catch the sucker bets. And the haggle doesn't have to be painful if people research how the deal will generally be structured etc.