This episode chronicles ongoing negotiations for the prized 50-acre property south of Dallas purchased for $400K that generated written offers every 7-10 days during ownership. After a developer backed out post-$50K engineering spend due to drainage issues, new buyers offered $750K but triggered exhausting negotiation cycles: demanding survey discrepancies be addressed at seller expense, pushing closing from 30 to 60 days despite lender confirmation of 30-day feasibility, requesting only $100 option fee on $750K purchase, and contradicting their own lender’s timeline statements.
Key Takeaways:
- Cultural Negotiation Patterns Certain buyer nationalities employ aggressive continuous-concession tactics that require firm boundaries—the “enough is enough” line prevented endless requests on this premier asset.
- Lender Direct Contact Protocol Calling the underwriter directly exposed buyer’s false claims about 60-day closing requirements when lender confirmed 30 days was achievable, eliminating negotiation leverage based on misrepresentation.
- Premium Asset = Walking Power Properties generating offer flow every 1-2 weeks enable hard negotiation stances—knowing replacement buyers exist allowed drawing firm lines on survey expenses and closing timeline extensions.
Tune in for the complete breakdown of managing difficult buyers while maintaining deal momentum on high-value properties with strong market demand.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. today I wanted to go over how to deal with, ⁓ difficult buyers. a little bit different than, ⁓ sellers. Some of the same rules can apply here. and how to really kind of balance, you know, your
current state of your own business and how strong of a position that you’re in with the current asset that you hold and knowing how much you’re going to allow yourself to be pushed in order to get a sale done versus deciding to walk away. There’s a certain art to it. ⁓ It’s really the art of negotiation. But I wanted to go over some
more tangible examples today, just for you to keep in mind for your own deals and how we are approaching one. So we’re trying to finalize a contract to sell the roughly 50 acre ⁓ parcel we have south of Dallas. I know I’ve talked about this one a lot before, you know, it’s a prized ⁓ asset within our portfolio that we bought for roughly 400K.
We were getting offers really every week that we had it ⁓ within our ownership. We were under contract for over two months already with the developer. They spent 50K on various engineering studies to try to do a development. The land ended up being too flat ⁓ to where they were going to have to do hundreds of thousands of dollars of dirt work to try to improve the water drainage.
Ultimately, they decided to bail on the deal. ⁓ Even when we were open to negotiation, I talk about this in ⁓ more length. ⁓ In other episodes, you can search. ⁓ And then as soon as we put the property back on the market, ⁓ we got another firm offer for the entire property for 750K. ⁓
about a week after we put the property on market. So still was getting a ton of attention. Even keeping in mind, yeah, maybe some difficulties if you’re really trying to do a larger development on it. But the location and just the overall assets and utility access is still just premiered. It’s a really rare parcel. So the buyer who came to us actually had made an offer on one of the child parcels.
right off the bat when we first listed this property back in January, I want to say. And this time they wanted to make an offer on the total parcel. And so they came in at 15k per acre. We tried to get them up to 16 and a half K per acre and also to reduce their closing timeline. I think they were asking for upwards of 60 days because they were going to do conventional financing 250 down 500 K financed.
Um, and they also only wanted to put like a thousand dollar EMD down for a three quarter million property. So we pushed back on that. Hey, can we get them to, uh, 45 days total close, uh, and 1 % to, or, you know, 7,500 for the EMD. Um, and also at the 16 and a half K per acre to exit. Um, they said, okay, the counterterms are fine, except for the price. 750 is the absolute max.
So we considered that and ultimately this property was getting a bit long in the tooth. There was more hair on it, even being too flat than we thought when we first bought it, plus being an ETJ makes it a little bit trickier for development.
And you doing some of the Hookups for public water I think was gonna be a little bit more expensive I’d have to go back through the notes But you either way we still have like a free 50k worth of engineering reports from the previous buyer like that adds value as well, And then you know just the general uncertainty still of the macro environment or like a you know 750 like we’re still you know and once we split with our
Um, the, the profits with our land investor partner, you know, we’re each still going to walk away with like a net 150 K. Um, like still an outstanding return plus our principal back, um, going to be feeling a lot more comfortable. Um, so he said, okay, you know what, that price is all right. Uh, so long as we can close now in 30 days, let’s see if we can push them there. They had agreed on that. Um, so we were all set to go under contract.
And then, you know, over the last, I don’t know, four or five days, they’ve just been nitpicking, nitpicking, nitpicking. I don’t think they’re very sophisticated buyers. This is more of a buy and hold strategy. And they’re also seemingly foreigners. I’m not sure US bit, you know, different ethnicity and, you know, not going to reveal that here, but.
There are certain stereotypes and we’re kind of joking within our company ⁓ of certain nationalities, cultures that are inherently more difficult to deal with when you’re across the table from them. And that has certainly been the case here. So I’m sure everybody has their own stories about that. So just to share a little bit more on the background. ⁓
And so they were then trying to push, we need longer time to close. You know, even though they had agreed, you know, at that 30 days, they also were saying, okay, there’s the total acreage is going to be short by like 0.05 acres out of like, you know, 50 acres because the survey goes out to the middle of the street to account for a utility easement, even though that’s just standard practice.
⁓ for pretty much anything that is, ⁓ along a, ⁓ a county road. ⁓ and so we pushed back on that day. I just have to understand how these things work. ⁓ call the surveyor if you need to, they had a couple other like legal description questions that we were able to clarify. ⁓ plus they also pushed the entire property is fenced, you know, nice barbed wire fencing. ⁓
But there was a neighbor to the southwest who was slightly encroaching a gravel ⁓ driveway onto our property that we only uncovered post survey. But we went and approached the neighbor and explained this to them and they understood, hey, yeah, we’re going to have to move this. ⁓ No problem there. They’re going to do that at their own expense. ⁓ But, you know, when the.
fencing and that driveway were built out, the fencing is slightly over the limits of the property, our property, so it’s not fully encompassing the total acreage. And so the buyers were like, hey, we want you to take care of this prior to ⁓ us closing and do it at your expense. And we’re like, no, we can take care of it, ⁓ but that’s going to have to be at the buyer’s expense. ⁓
to do this, like we already accepted, ⁓ you didn’t work with us at all from like a counter on a pricing side and like 15k per acre is like absolute minimum that we would consider for this. It’s just two prime of a property. So we pushed back on that and.
This is even before we got pre-approval from their lender too. So like, Hey, like you guys got to sort that out first anyway. And, know, we’re answering these other questions, trying to be responsive. ⁓ they didn’t push back further on the, ⁓ fencing. They, you know, were willing to accept that talk to the surveyor to figure out that utilities mint thing. and we did get pre-approval. Plus I got the contact information from, or for the lender, ⁓ especially for a big.
property like this, or at least purchase price, sales price. ⁓ you know, I want to talk to the lender directly. So got him on the phone, like, Hey, do you have any history working with these buyers? This is still their first time they’ve worked with them, but the lender was like, Hey, we have 90 % of the financial underwriting done on these guys. Just waiting for a couple of bank statements. They seem like, you know, there’s not going to be any issue financially seem well positioned based on tax records. In fact, we were working with these guys on another.
property that fell through over the past, I don’t know, four or six weeks. And they were well positioned for that as well. So, and I also asked like, Hey, what, you know, we want to do a 30 day close here. Any issues? Like, no, there’s not going to be an issue. I this one’s pretty cut and dry, simple to get this one done. you know, that covered the bases with the lender. And then
You know, I broke her was sending over other adjustments that they wanted on the contract. And this was starting to get really frustrating. It was like, okay, we nailed all these things down. You guys keep coming back for more stuff. And so then they were asking, okay, you know, for any shortages of acreage on the title policy, ⁓ they want us as the sellers to take care of that. Usually that’s going to be a buyer’s expense. ⁓
But in this case, I mean, we had just gotten the survey done. We had no issue closing. Like we don’t expect there to be any ⁓ issue on this. And if there was like it’s maybe a couple hundred bucks. So we gave on that. ⁓ Then ⁓ here I’m pulling up a couple of these just because there are just so many, so many nitpicks where it’s like.
Yeah, that’s obviously us as funders. Like we are extremely diligent about doing all of our duties, but you have to prep all your work beforehand. And if you keep going back to the well and just asking concession, concession, like all the, you’re going to really frustrate your counter counterparty and not be wanting to do business with these folks. like, they’re not really appreciating that. again, they’re getting a really killer deal on this property. ⁓
when we already had tacit agreements and already had the back and forth. And we had also requested, okay, 15 days of financial or due diligence feasibility. Again, we already understand there’s going to be no issue there. have 50K worth of.
engineering studies behind this and especially, yeah, just a buy and hold that we have our own survey. Like there’s going to be no, no issue at all. There’s public water. mean, there’s nothing’s going to come up here. And so, you know, we were asking, okay, for 10 % as an option fee of their EMD. So 750 bucks, if they bail on the deal, again, it’s premiere, they’re going to lock it up and they wanted it down to a hundred, a hundred dollars. Like, okay, fine. ⁓
We’ll give in for that as well. At most, it’s gonna lock us up for two weeks here. ⁓
And then they kept pushing for, hey, you know, our, our lender has said, Hey, they need to put 60 days down. ⁓ that’s a lender requirement. ⁓ so pushing back after we had already agreed on pricing and getting the, ⁓ total closing, ⁓ period down. And also like, you know, we have open phone, we record all conversations. Like I just talked to your lender.
the person directly underwriting your deal and they said 30 days was going to be no issue. So it’s like, Hey, you guys are lying through your teeth to us here. This is not a good feeling. We can bring all parties together and clear that up, but like, Hey, you’re not going to pull a fast one on us when it comes to the lender requirements, because we just talked to them. Plus our broker prepped a backup lender who also quoted they could do it in 30 days. So
Um, you know, you start to get a little bit of a bad feeling there and then it’s like, okay, can you guys even front the cash? You know, Lunder said you guys are well positioned, but you know, are you able to put that 250 K down within that 30 days? Like why are you asking for more more time here? Um, if you’re going to get cold feet here, like we’re not going to do the, uh, uh, the deal.
and then I run this first.
Yeah, then they wanted an update for the financing contingency to change it to 30 days and to be the full closing timeline. you know, usually you can figure that out shortly. Again, the lender already has 90 % of it done. So we had it, I think it’s 15 days, maybe 21 days. And I broke really pushed back. They’re like, no, I 30, 30. Okay, fine.
We’ll do that. have the pre-approval. And so then we thought, okay, we’re going to be squared away. And then the following day got additional pushback where they were saying, hey, if the title company for whatever reason has an issue with the survey being accepted, that’s going to be at a seller’s expense to get a whole nother one done. And we’re like, no way. We already spent.
I think something like five grand on the initial survey. was just done. ⁓ we know it’s solid. was accepted by the previous buyers who do a ton of developments in the area, accepted by a title company when we first bought the property. and, ⁓ you know, we also have the 50 K worth of engineering studies with like additional survey work there. Like there’s no way we’d agree to possibly pay for another, ⁓
Survey here like this. It’s not gonna come up But you know, even if it did like you guys are gonna have to front some of that work We’re not paying you know, considerable extra expense there and they kept pushing more for hey, we need at least 45 days closed period Even though again, we have confirmation from the lender that they can do it shorter So we gave on that’s it. Okay, we’ll give you an extra five days 35 days, we know it can be done
If we need to extend, we already agreed like, if we really need to extend due to the lender, it’s not gonna be an issue there. And at most you guys have stake, know, a hundred bucks. We’d rather not get this locked up just to get a hundred bucks out of you guys. That’s not gonna service us. ⁓ But it’s been so annoying. And I told the broker who’s just been ready to cuss these guys out ⁓ for a few days now, having to deal with them.
⁓ directly. And I told our broker to like, Hey, if, if like just, you know, tell them in no uncertain terms here, like we have been giving, ⁓ so much, ⁓ during this back and forth here that if they don’t agree to this, survey stipulation and they, you know, try to push, again on the closing date, like we are, we are walking. So like a full line is drawn in the sand now. ⁓
where if they don’t commit to this, we know we can get other buyer activity here. We’d like to get this one closed out, like enough is enough. So I just wanted to give you an example of some of the back and forth ⁓ that we’ve had with a very high level, a high value deal that we obviously want to exit. ⁓ It’s going to be an excellent return for us. We’ve been holding it for a while, but we also know, this one is
a higher quality property where we don’t immediately have a backup buyer, but since we’ve had this property, we’ve gotten a written offer every seven to 10 days that we held it. ⁓ So we’re not too worried that we wouldn’t generate additional activity even within this macro. ⁓ And so this might just come back to the buyers being like, okay, yeah, we pushed these guys.
as far as possible and you know, our, you know, we’re not bluffing this time. ⁓ Not that we were before, it’s just, you know, how do we work through this negotiation? But hey guys, you guys are being super annoying now. Like, you keep coming back to the table and just asking, asking, asking. Like that’s just not a good way to do business. So you guys are going to lose out. And maybe this is how they lost out on that previous deal that Lender was working.
just like, you know, maybe they’re just BSing. Who knows? I mean, we know they have the money. But if if they’re just like, super annoying to work with, that might have been how they fell out from from the other deal there. So just wanted to share that so you can kind of keep that in mind where again, you have to weigh like, how much do you need to exit a property? ⁓ You know, like the the auction property that we had? Yeah, like we would have been just
kept giving, giving, giving, or this other Tennessee property that we have, that’s going to be a net loser. Like I would basically take any price just to get out of the deal. Like we already know it’s a net loser. ⁓ a mistake for, for buying it. you know, I, I would probably cave on pretty much anything that, ⁓ a buyer, ⁓ presented to us. ⁓ even if we put up like an initial fight, initially, but like on this one, okay, there needs to be more back and forth here. So.
Just need to weigh that. ⁓ Best of luck to you on any current deals that you’re working on. Hopefully this is helpful. Looking forward to next time. SeriousLand.Capital for any of your funding needs. Again, we want higher value deals. ⁓ 150K plus is very interesting to us at the moment, though we will still consider some of the lower value ones. ⁓ And Landia, the Diligence Facebook Group, zero cost review of your land deals and landpricer.ai. ⁓
final sprint is on the way. Most reliable land pricing tool on the market. With that in mind, subscribe and share. Take care everybody. Bye.
