WHAT YOU CAN NEGOTIATE IN A HOME PURCHASE
When most people picture negotiating on a home, they picture one number: the list price. You offer somewhere under the asking price, the seller counters, you settle in the middle, and whoever gives up the most ground "loses." For a lot of buyers, that back-and-forth over the sale price is the negotiation. It's only a fraction of it. The price is the headline. The real negotiation happens in the terms underneath it, and right now those terms are where the money is. Buyers have more room to ask than they've had in years. The market has tilted in their favor, and it's showing up at the closing table: in 2025, 62.2% of buyers paid below the list price, and the typical below-list buyer saved 7.9% — about $31,592 — the biggest discount in over a decade.¹ So here's what actually separates the buyers who come out ahead. It isn't the ones who push hardest on the price. It's the ones who understand everything that's on the table, and know which things ...
