Using Home Buyer/Seller Personality Types to Your Advantage in Real Estate Deals

Whether you are buying or selling a home, you will face all kinds of people - people whose skills and preferences cover a broad spectrum. By identifying those skills and preferences, you can form a strategy that will improve your negotiations skills during real estate transactions. When negotiating the sales price or purchase price of a home it can be helpful to categorize people into three broad types - analytical, visual, and intuitive - in terms of the way their thinking influences their behavior. Understanding these three types of personalities can help you better understand the home buyer/seller and help you improve your negotiating strategy.

Analytical People - The analytical home buyer/seller is mostly influenced by financial, statistical and factual matters. They like to be fully prepared before entering into any real estate discussion and want all of their factual ducks in a row before making a decision. As you might guess, analytic people tend to gravitate towards jobs that require working with numbers such as accountants, financial analysts, auditors and tax consultants. They tend to be left-brain thinkers. Occasionally, analytical people may make decisions they may not agree with personally if the numbers work out. For example, they might buy a house that is not their dream home if they believe they are getting a terrific bargain. You can better influence an analytical person by being fully prepared with information related to the financial or factual side of the home purchase or sale. You can possibly even down-play aesthetic or intuitive matters, such as how nice your house looks, what a good neighborhood it's in or how fair of a person you are to work with.

Visual People - The visual home buyer/seller will focus on how things look and feel. Visual people may be less concerned with facts and figures in favor of more artistic considerations. In terms of buying your home, they might actually pay more for your house than an analytical person. In terms of selling a home, they will undoubtedly stress the aesthetic pleasantries of the home including the surrounding good neighborhood. Many artists, writers, actors, interior designers and other people who work in creative jobs tend to be visually motivated. As you might suspect, visual people tend to be right-brained thinkers. A visual person may also be more touchy-feely than other types. For example, they often like to run their hand over a countertop, feel the grain of the cabinetry or feel the drapery fabric. When selling your home to a visual person, consider emphasizing the appearance, condition, and quality of the home.

Intuitive People - Intuitive thinking home buyers/sellers are influenced more by how they feel about the home or situation. If their gut feelings about you if selling or the home if buying are good, they'll be happy to work with you. On the other hand, if they don't have a good feeling about you, the home or other aspect of the real estate transaction you'll have to work extra hard to overcome their negative impressions. Intuitive thinking people often make decisions quickly because they operate primarily on instinct. People who work in jobs that require rapid analysis, diagnosis, and action are often intuitive thinkers. This includes doctors, lawyers, dentists, nurses, general managers and salespeople. It will go a long way if you work hard to build a strong bond with this type of person. While you should do this with all people, the intuitive person puts more emphasis on ensuring they work with people they like and trust.

In reality, you cannot categorize a home buyer/seller into a single personality profile. Everyone has different experiences, emotions, and preferences that influence their behavior and cause them to straddle between the three personality types. The home buying/selling process further complicates the characterization because you are often not dealing directly with the buyer/seller, but rather their real estate agent. Because of the nature of their job, real estate agents are typically adept at straddling all three types. However, everyone will typically have a stronger preference or alignment with one of the personality types. Once discovered, you can modify your strategy and approach accordingly.

You best learn a home buyer/seller or real estate agents personality type during small talk and by asking general questions. This can be done nonchalantly early in the discussions. As you begin learning more about the home buyer/seller or real estate agent, be cognizant about the three personality types and think about comments, questions and/or arguments that will help convince the various types of people. Keep in mind, just because you are dealing with a visual thinking person, you can ignore or fudge the financial aspects. Doing so is naive and will leave you vulnerable. Once you determine the type of person you are dealing with, don't act like you have special insight about that person. Continue to act as you would normally while inwardly work on your strategies, comments and arguments to fit the type of person you're dealing with.

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