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.
An offer arrives significantly below asking. The buyer’s agent seems reluctant to cooperate, and your seller client, frustrated and defensive, refuses to entertain it.
The home has been on the market for over two months, your sellers urgently need to close on their next home within six weeks, and no other potential buyers are on the horizon.
What do you do next?
Every day, I speak with Realtors who are navigating precisely these moments. Instinctively, you might feel compelled to persuade or even push your seller into accepting reality. Yet this approach often escalates tension, damages trust and jeopardizes both the deal and your relationship. Navigating these complex situations effectively requires more than intuition — it demands Negotiation Intelligence.
Welcome to my column, Negotiation Intelligence, where on the first Friday of each month, I’ll answer your questions on how to tackle difficult scenarios like a pro and master the art of negotiation. You’ll find the answer to the question above in my next column on July 4.
A mission to elevate the skills and professionalism of our industry
What we do matters profoundly because when people make informed decisions about housing, their lives improve significantly. However, as technology continues to reshape how consumers access information and services, the agents who will thrive are those who master the uniquely human skills — negotiation, communication, and connection. These skills can’t be automated or replicated by AI, making them your most valuable professional assets in an evolving marketplace.
Many agents struggle with these sophisticated negotiation skills our clients deserve, not because they lack dedication, but because quality training in this critical area is scarce.
This skill gap risks increasing the trust deficit that consumers have for Realtors.
Did you know that a 2021 study by Re/Max Canada revealed over half of Canadians believe Realtor commissions are agents’ top priority, while 81 per cent indicated they would prefer working with a Realtor holding a certification demonstrating professionalism?
Consumer trust is essential for the long-term viability of organized real estate. Building professional trust is a key element to negotiation mastery and requires establishing trust of both the heart (be honest) and the head (be skilled).
Through this column, I’ll offer real-life case studies illuminated by practical negotiation theory. I aim to help you build deeper negotiation awareness, refine critical skills, and deliver stronger results for your clients and your business.
Extra support for the industry
My perspective comes from 40 years immersed in real estate — 22 as a top-producing agent in Toronto and then as founder of The Nature of Real Estate. I have worked with thousands of Canadian agents as the facilitator of the AREN and PREN negotiation certification courses and as a one-on-one consultant to top agents and team leaders across Canada.
I’m passionately dedicated to this industry, profoundly grateful for the life it has allowed me, and playfully refer to myself as the Modern Elder of Real Estate.
Over my decades in the industry, I’ve witnessed fundamental shifts. Brokerages once played a vital role in nurturing agents. Commission structures created both the incentive and the financial means to offer high-quality training. But today, commission splits favour agents, brokerage revenue has diminished, and essential services — especially high-quality training — have become underfunded.
Training responsibilities have largely shifted to governing bodies and outside organizations. While our boards, provincial associations, and CREA provide valuable instruction on contracts and regulations, they rarely offer guidance on the nuanced skills that define exceptional realtors. This leaves agents navigating a sea of coaching programs of variable credibility, many focused exclusively on lead generation and lacking meaningful skill development.
This gap means agents frequently struggle, even when leads are plentiful, because they lack the skills to connect and build the trust required to earn the right to represent them and to navigate increasingly complex negotiations.
What this column offers
Negotiation Intelligence is the single most valuable skill a realtor can develop. Negotiation is far more nuanced than simply haggling over price. It’s a sophisticated art involving numerous subtle interactions: convincing clients to choose you, resolving disagreements constructively, and skillfully navigating every stage of a transaction, from first conversations to managing conditions and closing.
Each month, I’ll examine real-life negotiation scenarios, analyze them through negotiation theory, explore effective strategies, and provide practical, actionable guidance. We’ll delve deeply into what to say, when to say it, and how to manage the emotional dynamics that inevitably surface in high-stakes negotiations.
As Realtors, it is an honour and privilege to be invited into clients’ lives, guiding them through crucial crossroads. Mastering negotiation is about more than closing deals—it’s about building your confidence, pride, and lasting professional impact.
I’m thrilled to begin this learning journey with you. If you’re facing a particularly challenging negotiation scenario (anything except lead generation — seriously!), email me. Let’s elevate our industry, one successful negotiation at a time.
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 a 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 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 better outcomes for clients. As artificial intelligence reshapes the profession, Suze’s current work explores how AI can enhance professional judgment without replacing the human skills at the heart of successful negotiation. You can learn more about her learning ecosystem here.
A passionate sailor and international yacht racer, Suze believes that excellence, whether on the water or at the negotiating table, comes from continual learning, thoughtful preparation and the ability to adapt as conditions change.
This is great. Suze is amazing.
I agree. Her courses are well worth the commitment.
Hi Suze!
I continue to follow and learn from your words of wisdom. I was recently working with an investor who put offers on 3 separate properties (no – not all at once) and each time, decided that the sellers should actually pay for the renovations! Tough slog – and you guessed it – the deals fell through. Quick – how exactly would you have paved this road?
PS – I loved your courses – and your feistiness!
As they say in real estate sales, “it’s not what you know, it’s what you can remember to say in TIME”. Even a top realtor can draw a blank in any given moment. You can never be too proficient at language skills.
When a listing is calling or hoping for multiple offers and you have an interested client with questions. How can you negotiate when you send an email to the listing agent who “knows” there is a lot of interest and therefore will have offers from others who do not ask questions and so they ignore your, emails, texts and calls for information that would help your client make a decision.
Hello Zsuzanna,
This is a frustrating and unfortunately common scenario in multiple offers with unskilled, uncooperative or overwhelmed listing agents. It really underscores the need for more principled negotiation training in our industry.
When the listing agent is unresponsive during a potential multiple-offer situation it could be that they are withholding information, they are leveraging their perceived power advantage, or they are just too busy to respond.
As the buyer’s agent, you still have power – just a different kind.
Start by trying to build collaboration. A carefully written email or text message that is friendly and acknowledges that they are busy can be a good start. Keep it succinct.
Let them know that the question you are asking are likely to result in an offer and that you have a high-quality client.
Ideally, you want to find out if this is a tactic or if the agent is just being careless. Either way, be creative in building collaboration
I’ll add this one to the July column with more details. Thanks for bringing it forward.
Looking forward to your July column, Suze. Thanks for sharing!