Might have accidentally killed a deal... oops

[Carl C.]

Last night my partner and I were on the phone with a seller's agent negotiating an offer and everything seemed to be going well. We had made an earlier offer which she told us they wouldn't accept. After looking at our numbers there was no way we could offer more. It just wouldn't work for us. we explained our reasoning to her and suggested that we would be willing to do a lease back at a significant discount for a few months so the current owners could be ready to go when they found their new house. This would also in effect add a few thousand dollars to deal. She liked the idea and said she'd discuss it with the sellers. Then my partner adds in that since we aren't using an agent, perhaps the selling agent would be willing to reduce her commission by 1% to help sweeten the deal for the sellers since she won't be splitting the commission with another agent. Well that stopped the to conversation cold. She was clearly very insulted by the suggestion. I didn't think it was such a bad thing to suggest but obviously I was waayyy wrong on that one. So I'm pretty sure this deal will be dead. Unfortunate, but we were going in on the top end of our budget anyway so it isn't the end of the world. That was a very valuable learning experience, to say the least!