That’s just what we did
I negotiate for a living. Well, it’s not all of my job but I spend plenty of time preparing for negotiations and then going in to get the best deal possible. I’ve learned over the years that the gentle approach can be most beneficial. Instead of walking into the zone controlled HVAC of a conference room and making demands, I like to gauge things a bit first. Just sort of see where things start and adjust from there. This little bit of skill came in really handy when buying our new place. Actually, it’s the first place we’ve lived since we upgraded the HVAC equipment and sold our home. With the kids gone, it was just more house than we wanted and just not sustainable living for just two people. That’s important to my wife and I. We’re into leaving as small a footprint as we can. And that big house needed a family not a couple. So when we found the house we wanted, we quickly made an offer. The offer was accepted but the seller wasn’t going to replace the old HVAC equipment. He just didn’t want the hassle. We were willing to walk away from the deal or that’s the tone. While he wasn’t ready to lay out the money and go through getting new residential HVAC, he was willing to negotiate price. And that put a big smile on my face. We were able to take enough off the price of the house to install state of the art HVAC equipment on our own. That’s just what we did. Every time I catch myself enjoying just the most perfect quality heating and air, I smile a little bit over that negotiation.