Every Concession Should Buy Something
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If something is leaving my client's side of the table, something is coming back. Not always money, not always the same size, but something, and it is named out loud. Here is the trade I write most often and why both halves are cheap to the person giving them.
Nothing crosses the table for free
This is the rule I am strictest about, and it is the one that most often separates a negotiation that goes well from one that slowly bleeds.
If something is leaving my client's side of the table, something is coming back. Not always money. Not always the same size. But something, and it is named out loud.
The reason is not toughness for its own sake. It is what a free concession teaches the other side about you, which is that there is more where that came from. Once somebody learns that, they will come back. They always do, and by then you have no currency left for the things that genuinely matter, like the inspection.
The trade I write most often
Here is the clearest example I have, and it is the one I use in almost every competitive buyer offer.
We offer the sellers a free two-week rent-back. And in the same offer, we ask the sellers to buy a home warranty. Both terms go in together, every time.
Look at what each side is actually parting with. My buyer gives up two weeks of possession they had no use for — they are usually coming out of a lease or a house that has already sold, and the keys sitting in a drawer for fourteen days costs them nothing real. In return they get a year of coverage on the furnace, the well pump, the water heater and everything else in a house they have known for three weeks.
The sellers spend a few hundred dollars on that warranty. In return they get two weeks to move like human beings, instead of packing, closing and unloading a truck inside the same seven days while holding down a job.
Both halves are cheap to the person giving them and valuable to the person receiving them. That is what a good trade looks like. Nobody feels worked over, and both sides got something they actually wanted. We have won a lot of contracts on that pair, including some where we were not the highest number in the stack.
The deposit I do not ask for
There is a related decision inside that same trade that other agents ask me about.
When a home has obviously been cared for — the mechanicals serviced, the filters changed, the yard kept — I do not ask for a security deposit on the rent-back.
The reasoning is not sentimental. The rent-back addendum already covers damage during the move-out, so the protection is written into the document I am signing. Adding a deposit on top of it buys very little actual safety. What it does buy is a change of tone, from "we are trying to make this easier for you" to "we do not trust you," and on a stack of similar offers that tone is worth more than the deposit.
Notice that this is still not a giveaway. The warranty is the consideration. The deposit is simply a protection I have judged redundant, which is a different decision entirely.
Say the trade out loud
The discipline is mostly verbal, and it is simpler than people expect.
"We can do that for you, and here is what we would need in return."
That sentence does two useful things at once. It keeps the exchange balanced, and it signals that you are a person who trades rather than a person who folds. The other side adjusts accordingly, usually within one round.
What it does not do is create conflict. Naming a trade is not aggressive. It is clearer and more comfortable than the alternative, which is a slow accumulation of unspoken resentment on whichever side has been giving.
Naming what you are not asking for
There is a version of this that works in reverse, and it is one of my favourite moves at the inspection stage.
A forty-page report on a fifty-year-old house always produces items. If I ask for all of them, I look unreasonable and I hand the seller a grievance. So I sort the report into things that affect safety, structure and systems, and things that are ordinary age and wear. I ask for the first group.
And then I tell the seller, explicitly, what I am not asking for.
That is a concession being spent deliberately. It costs my buyer nothing, because they were never going to get the cosmetic items anyway, and it buys goodwill at precisely the moment goodwill decides whether a seller fixes the failed pump or tells you to take it as it is.
Your inventory of cheap things
Every client has a list of things that are inexpensive for them and valuable to the other side. Most never think to write it down.
For a buyer that often includes flexibility on the settlement date, a larger deposit, possession terms that suit the seller's move, a cap on repair requests, closing cost help structured to reduce appraisal risk, and inspecting for information rather than for a repair list.
For a seller it often includes a home warranty, a survey they may already have in a drawer, appliances they were not planning to move, a longer rent-back the other direction, and flexibility on the buyer's inspection scheduling.
The work is figuring out which of those the other side actually wants, which is a different article: prospecting for information.
The exception people think exists
Buyers sometimes tell me that in a hot market you simply have to give things away to be competitive. I understand the feeling, and I think it is a misreading.
In a competitive offer, the concession is not free — it is buying the house. That is the consideration. The rent-back is not charity, it is the thing that makes a seller choose our contract over four others at similar money. The trade is still a trade; the other side of it just happens to be "and you select us."
What would genuinely be a giveaway is conceding after you have already been selected, for nothing, because somebody asked. That is the moment to slow down, and it is usually the moment people do not.
Where people get stuck
The pattern I see most is a client who gives three small things away early to seem agreeable, and then has nothing left when the inspection produces something real. Being liked is not a strategy. Being fair and clear is, and it is the thing that actually keeps a deal calm through sixty days.
The other pattern is the opposite: refusing everything on principle, which reads as bad faith and gets deals killed over items worth a fraction of the transaction.
Between those sits the trade. Name it, balance it, and spend where it counts. The rest of how I work is in the complete guide to real estate negotiation in Southern Maryland.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Every concession should buy something. A concession given for nothing teaches the other side there is more available, and they will come back for it.
The buyer offers the sellers a free two-week rent-back and, in the same offer, asks the sellers to buy a home warranty. Both halves are cheap to the giver and valuable to the receiver.
When a home has clearly been well cared for, the rent-back addendum already covers move-out damage, so a deposit adds little real protection and changes the tone of the offer.
Say it plainly: we can do that for you, and here is what we would need in return. Naming a trade is clearer and less combative than quietly conceding.
The concession is not free even then. In a competitive offer what it buys is the house, which is the consideration. Conceding after you have been selected, for nothing, is the real mistake.
Naming what you are not asking for. Sorting a report into safety and systems items versus ordinary wear, and saying which items you are letting go, buys goodwill when it matters most.
What Is Cheap for You and Valuable to Them?
Every client has a list and most never write it down. Let us build yours before you are sitting at the table.
Dawn Riley
Associate Broker, Realtor, Master Certified Negotiator
The Riley Team at Deep Roots Real Estate
410-414-2438
dawn@dawnriley.net
https://dawnriley.net/