By Suze Cumming
Suze Cumming, founder of The Nature of Real Estate and Canada’s Real Estate Negotiation guru, answers Realtors’ questions on the first Friday of the month about negotiation tactics and working through tricky situations. Have a question for Suze? Send her an email.
A friend recently asked for my professional opinion on the value of her investment condominium. She was seriously considering putting the property on the market and wanted an honest assessment based on available market evidence. As you can reasonably imagine, the valuation I provided came in lower than she had hoped.
Because I am not an active sales agent, I did not take the listing. Instead, she chose to list the property with another agent at a significantly higher price point. Predictably, the property failed to sell in the prevailing market conditions, and she is now left wishing things had unfolded quite differently. While I have altered minor details of this transaction to protect her privacy, the experience has stayed with me vividly. This scenario aligns with striking precision to the daily hurdles that many real estate professionals face across the country.
At the time, I thoroughly understood the pricing question and felt entirely confident in the accuracy, strength, and defensibility of my Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) and pricing recommendation. Where I fell short was in failing to dig deeply into her underlying interests and emotional drivers. I simply handed her a numerical assessment. Because she knew this happens to be my core area of expertise, I naively expected her to readily accept my advice at face value. And because she was a personal friend rather than a prospective client, I figured she could list the property at the recommended price or choose not to; I simply did not feel any pressing need to persuade or convince her.
What I missed surfacing with her during that initial conversation proved to be critical to making a sound, successful decision. I learned much later down the road that the condominium was an integral pillar of her retirement strategy. At the precise price point I had recommended, the financial proceeds would fall short of supporting the future lifestyle she had envisioned for herself. Furthermore, the property represented a profound sense of personal independence following the painful dissolution of a long-term marriage. There was an immense emotional and financial weight wrapped up in this single investment asset.
For me, the figure on the paper was merely an objective assessment of what a typical buyer would likely be willing to pay in the current market. For her, however, that same number raised deeply unsettling questions about what her future held next.
When the Evidence Is Sound
Most experienced real estate agents have sat across the table from a seller who desperately wants a price higher than current market evidence realistically supports. We meticulously explain the recent comparable sales, review the current competition in the neighborhood, and present our professional recommendation. When the seller inevitably hesitates, our default reaction is often to dive back into the numbers, perhaps pulling up another comparable example or offering a more detailed, technical explanation of market trends.
Sometimes, that tactical approach helps bridge the gap. Other times, however, we find ourselves painstakingly answering a question the seller already intellectually understands, while completely leaving the much harder, more consequential question untouched.
What would accepting this lower price actually mean for their long-term plans and personal security?
This fundamental disconnect is precisely why professional pricing requires far more than a strong comparative market analysis. The CMA provides historical evidence of past transactions. Our subjective estimate of market value interprets that evidence through the lens of current economic conditions. However, a true pricing strategy must bring the seller’s unique objectives, constraints, and personal circumstances directly into the decision-making process regarding how to enter the market. Those personal circumstances deserve just as much curiosity, professional attention, and respect as the physical property itself.
Looking Beneath the Position
In professional negotiation theory, I frequently teach a practical framework known as PIE: Position, Interests, and Emotional Drivers.
The position is simply what someone explicitly says they want out of a situation. In this particular real estate transaction, the position was a higher listing price.
The interests, on the other hand, represent what that specific outcome needs to accomplish for the individual. My friend was quietly counting on the net proceeds of the sale to help fund her upcoming retirement years. Understanding that underlying reality does not suddenly make a higher, unachievable market price magically attainable, but it completely explains why swallowing a lower figure was so psychologically and financially difficult for her.
Emotional drivers heavily influence high-stakes decisions as well. A property can frequently represent personal security, hard-earned independence, or years of personal sacrifice and labor. We do not need to pass judgment on a client’s private identity or personal life to recognize that selling a home or investment property often carries profound personal meaning.
What we do need to do is remain genuinely willing to ask the right questions, listen attentively, and allow what we discover to meaningfully influence our professional advice.
A thoughtful question such as, "What would selling at this price make possible, and what would it leave unresolved?" can open the door to a deeply productive conversation that no amount of comparable sales data can ever replicate on its own. The answers may reveal a practical financial constraint that we, as professionals, can actually help address. They may expose a difficult trade-off that requires more careful thought. Or, quite simply, it may help us understand why the seller urgently needs more time to process the transition.
Willingness Can Change
There is another vital component to this unfolding story. During the active course of the listing, my friend did eventually ask her listing agent to reduce the asking price down to my original recommendation. Unfortunately, the agent advised a much smaller, incremental price reduction instead—a move that had virtually zero impact on showing activity or buyer interest. Shortly before the listing agreement was set to expire, the agent proposed yet another minor reduction coupled with a listing extension. By that point, however, my friend was thoroughly exhausted and entirely unwilling to continue the process.
Because I was not personally involved in those ongoing negotiations, I cannot speak to all of the professional reasoning behind them. However, the sequence of events truly matters. It demonstrates clearly that a seller’s initial position does not permanently dictate where they will mentally or emotionally stand three weeks later.
Continuing to listen actively is a core part of our professional work. When a client finally becomes ready to reconsider their stance, we must strive to understand what has shifted internally and help them carefully evaluate the immediate decision before them.
Today, the condominium remains unsold. My friend is currently considering making cosmetic improvements to the unit before attempting to relist it once more, although the available funds to complete these upgrades are severely limited. That proposed strategy demands careful, objective examination regarding the upfront costs, the likely net effect on the property’s market value, and whether it genuinely serves her long-term financial goals.
That proposal also deserves deep curiosity from an advisory standpoint. What does she realistically hope these improvements will accomplish? What alternative options might meet that exact underlying need with less financial risk?
Helping Someone Find a Way Forward
Conversations of this nature are the very essence of negotiation, and they invariably happen long before a prospective buyer ever submits a formal offer on a property.
As real estate professionals, we are tasked with helping people navigate competing personal priorities, understand complex market constraints, and explore viable possibilities. We bring our market knowledge and objective professional judgment to the table. Clients bring intimate knowledge of their own lives, their personal needs, and what they are ultimately willing to accept. A truly useful advisory strategy requires both elements working in tandem.
Sometimes, doing this groundwork reveals an alternative path that neither person initially considered at the outset. Other times, it simply leads to a difficult, clear-eyed decision made with much more realistic expectations. It can successfully help a client move forward with their life while giving the agent a solid strategy they can put into practice with total confidence.
Understanding the full scope of my friend’s personal circumstances has not changed my professional opinion of the property’s actual market value. However, it has profoundly changed my appreciation of the complex human decision she was facing at that juncture. If I were given the opportunity to have that first conversation over again, I would start not by pitching numbers, but by asking what the sale needed to make possible for her future.
Conversations like these ask a great deal of us as industry professionals. We need to recognize precisely when gathering more market evidence will help, when to deeply explore what lies beneath a client’s stated position, and how to translate that deeper understanding into actionable options that a client can realistically consider. These are advanced negotiation skills that we can study, practice, and continually strengthen. Developing them provides us with a reliable process to draw upon when client conversations inevitably become difficult.
Knowing what a property is objectively worth is certainly essential. Helping someone decide what to do with that knowledge takes an entirely different kind of professional expertise.
Suze Cumming is the founder of The Nature of Real Estate and one of Canada’s leading educators in real estate negotiation. For more than two decades, she has helped over 7,000 real estate professionals strengthen their negotiation skills through the Accredited Real Estate Negotiator (AREN) and Professional Real Estate Negotiator (PREN) programs, as well as coaching many of Canada’s top-performing agents and teams.
Her work focuses on helping Realtors develop Negotiation Intelligence: the practical skills of preparation, communication, critical thinking, trust-building, and strategic decision-making that lead to vastly better outcomes for clients. As artificial intelligence continues to reshape the profession, Suze’s current work explores how AI can enhance professional judgment without ever replacing the essential human skills at the heart of successful negotiation.
A passionate sailor and international yacht racer, Suze believes that true excellence—whether out on the water or across the negotiating table—comes from continual learning, thoughtful preparation, and the agility to adapt as conditions change.