Negotiating, however, can be learned. Tips found online are often aimed at either home-buyers or home-sellers. Which sounds sensible, except that most of us are buying and selling at the same time. And if you want to negotiate successfully, you have to understand how it works from both sides – you have to understand how it works from the other side. When acting as a purchaser, you should be thinking about how vendors manoeuvre. When acting as a vendor, you should understand the motivations and tactics of buyers.

And that is the first golden rule of negotiation: always try to see it from the other side. You’ll only really do this if you empathise. Which is why getting hostile, in a negotiation, will only hurt you. The best negotiators always pay careful attention and don’t get distracted by their emotions. Golden rule number two: keep cool.

Of course, property negotiations are often handled through estate agents (in England and Wales; it’s often lawyers in Scotland). But it is still you who will make the decisions. So the more you understand about how negotiations work, the better the instructions you will be able to give your agent. Agents can advise you, but you need to know whether to accept that advice, or not. Ultimately, it’s your home (or potential home), not theirs.

An excellent rule when dealing with agents – let’s call it golden rule three – is to never reveal your limits. As a buyer, you’ll have noticed that the first question an agent asks, when you call up to see what’s for sale, is ‘what’s your budget?’ The nice person on the other end of the phone is not just asking so they can find you a selection of the right properties. They’re asking because they will immediately add this figure to your file. And when you make an offer on a slightly less expensive property, they will know you can go higher. As estate agents like to say, it’s their job to pick a purchaser’s pocket until there’s nothing left. Never reveal the height of your financial ceiling.

As a vendor you can afford to be more candid – simply because the agent is acting on your behalf. Or should be. All the same, if they know what you’ll accept, there’s always a chance that they’ll consciously or subconsciously steer a vendor towards that price in order to secure a sale.

Of course, revealing your limits is one thing. Knowing them is another. And this is another often-quoted golden rule: work out what you would really be prepared to pay, or accept, and stick to it. This advice is less useful than it sounds, though. Because our plans are often too optimistic. We imagine one minimum price we’d accept when, if push came to shove, we’d accept a bit less. We imagine one maximum price we’d pay when, if it was a question of losing a house we’d fallen in love with, we’d pay a bit more. This is one of the functions of negotiation: to reveal the truth to ourselves. It’s why offers creep. So here’s a tip: be honest with yourself, when you set your maximum or minimum; honesty will help you stay firm.

And when you do hold, hold hard. Bidding fever is always a danger. Humans don’t like to lose. It is easy to get swept over your maximum limit, as a buyer. ‘It’s just another 1%!’ Maybe. But you didn’t want to pay it when you were thinking about it coolly. Beware of the sunk-cost fallacy, as well. This is a flaw in our thinking whereby we carry on doing something that’s bad for us on the grounds that we’ve already invested so much time and effort in it, so we don’t want that to be ‘thrown away’. There is good psychological research to show that we feel the pain of losing roughly twice as powerfully as we feel the pleasure of winning. When trying to buy a house, we will sometimes do almost anything to avoid feeling that pain – including paying over the odds. In the late stages of negotiation, many people worry that they will regret the house that got away, and don’t factor in the regret they might feel about paying too much – or simply not living in the house they might have bought elsewhere at a more reasonable price.  

Another emotion to distrust, along with anticipated regret, is discomfort. Negotiations are stressful. If they’re not, they’re not working. As a purchaser, if you don’t feel worried that your offer is too low, it’s probably too high. As a vendor, if you don’t feel worried that your price is too high, it’s probably too low. So here’s another golden rule: discomfort is a sign that you’re in the right area. But you’ll also need to discount your own anxiety. It’s pretty typical in a negotiation to underestimate your own power and overestimate the other party’s. Try to live with the discomfort that arises, and you’ll act in a way that more accurately reflects the true balance of power.

In any negotiation, information is the most powerful tool you have. Famously, most people think they are above average, and we have a similar tendency to believe we know better than others when it comes to knowing what someone is really saying. Psychological research shows that we are not in fact so good at this. And it’s all the harder when you’re negotiating with an agent on the phone. There’s no body language to go on.

So go on information. For purchasers, the history of recent house sold prices is easy to find online, nowadays, at .gov.uk and any number of online agents. (And the longer you’ve been looking, the more you’ll understand how those sold prices relate to the houses themselves.) Arm yourself with specific information, too. As early as possible – ie long before the agent starts getting guarded about what they tell you – ask every possible question about the vendor. How long has the property been on the market? Has the price ever been reduced? What other offers have there been, and when? Were any accepted? Did any purchasers withdraw, and why? Were surveys done? Does the vendor have somewhere to move to, and what is their timetable? Are they under pressure to exchange and complete? If you have the answers to these questions you will be able to build a picture of the vendor – to understand their pressure points.

One of the critical pieces of information concerns timing. Many negotiations only happen in earnest in the last stages. It can help if you establish a timeframe, so you can get to that point without wasting too much time on the way. It’s perfectly acceptable to make or accept offers that come with a deadline – but it’s only credible if you can offer a good reason for that deadline. If you don’t, you risk the other party calling your bluff. A deadline is a kind of threat. And yet another golden rule of negotiations is this: never make a threat you’re not willing to follow through.

Talking of time, it’s important to take yours, especially as a vendor. Never let yourself be rushed – and almost every agent will try to rush you! If someone does put the pressure on, it is usually a sign of weakness in their negotiating position – and a sign that you can afford to be bolder. As a buyer, you do sometimes have to jump when it comes down to it – negotiations don’t stay open for ever. But again, try to discount your worries. If you’re regarded as a real prospect, if you’re really in the running, the race will stay open for you longer than you might think.

And now to the dark side. Some people are willing to renegotiate prices even after an offer is agreed, but you risk endangering the whole sale if you try it. There is one window where renegotiation is allowed, however, and that is after the purchaser receives the results of their survey or report. If the survey uncovers an unexpected and substantial cost that was not mentioned or evident when the home was offered for sale, then it is reasonable, ethical and indeed fairly typical for the purchaser to reduce their offer. Ordinarily, this is by an amount that fairly reflects the costs of doing the work. If you are a buyer, it is wise to be able to provide evidence of those costs; if you are the vendor it is wise to have an estimate up your sleeve even before the sales process starts. (Negotiations at this point can become disagreements about the size of builders’ estimates.) If a buyer tries to knock the price down further than this, they are trying to steal themselves a deal. But if you know your true lower limit, then gazundering (ie trying to know down the sale price just before exchange) won’t rattle you too much. There is no pleasure like the pleasure of telling a gazunderer to gaz off. Your cool analysis of their behaviour during the sale process will tell you whether they are really likely to pull out of the sale, of if they’re just trying it on.

This last point underlies the importance of your own behaviour in a negotiation. How you comport yourself, to use an old-fashioned word, will affect how much the other party trusts you. If things get sticky – in a bidding war, when there are misunderstandings or delays, when something unexpected comes up – trust can count for a great deal. Trust will get you safely through the process, and deliver the home or the sale you hoped for. This is one reason why it is occasionally a good negotiation strategy … not to negotiate at all. Some buyers go in with their top price, and tell the agent that’s what they’re doing. Some vendors set the price they want and then accept it when it’s offered. It’s a strategy that’s worth considering. But as with every other strategy, you have to be sure that the plan will survive what the military call ‘contact with the enemy’.

One last golden rule – maybe I’ll call it a diamond rule. People (and other online articles) offer all kinds of rules of thumb for negotiation. ‘Start ten percent below’, they suggest, or ‘the second offer is still below what they’re really prepared to pay’. Be wary of such rules – because there are no rules in negotiation, there are people, and circumstances.