职场英语：Not negotiating

Not negotiating

Ever wonder whether something’s negotiable? The higher the price, the more wiggle room. Houses and cars are negotiable; your dry cleaning bill isn’t (unless the job got botched). That leaves a lot in-between. Consider hotel rooms. The rates must be negotiable; no two people ever pay the same thing, and no one ever pays the price that’s listed on the door of their room. Why not ask, “Is there any flexibility?” That’s a good negotiating question for lots of ambiguous situations. Flexibility sounds like a virtue. Who doesn’t want to be flexible? But with houses, you assume flexibility. No one takes the asking price literally.

The house we bought was priced at X. I wish I could tell you more about X, but I can’t because X is a ridiculous number, unless you live in a place like Boston where everyone is insanely convinced that a price like X is a steal. Actually, the price was X + $34,900. The $34,900 part seemed negotiable. We bid X minus $35,000. That allowed the seller to say, “Let’s just split the difference.” Unfortunately, the seller must have had a different script; he only lowered his price by $1,000. Our plan wasn’t going well.