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.

Unresponsive, condescending, aggressive:  These are just a few of the adjectives I hear daily from Realtors about the “other” agent in failed real estate negotiations.

Welcome back to Negotiation Intelligence, your monthly resource for sharpening your negotiation skills and raising the professional bar in real estate.

In the last two columns, we explored a scenario where an offer came in low, and the seller was defensive and unrealistic. But there was another problem: the other agent was uncooperative. This month, we focus on that often-overlooked challenge—navigating the agent on the other side of the table.

Real estate negotiations are not a solo sport. You are only as good as your ability to work with others – even and especially the difficult ones.  

Most negotiations involve at least two agents acting as intermediaries. We rarely speak directly with the other principal, so your ability to connect with, persuade, and build collaboration with their agent is an essential negotiation skill.

In many real estate negotiations, it’s not the buyer or seller who derails the deal—it’s the agent on the other side. And here’s the catch: every offer, request, and nuance is filtered through that other agent. If their filter is warped by ego, fear, inexperience, or lack of training, the whole deal can suffer.

A skilled negotiator learns to observe their counterpart—not to judge, but to understand. The goal is not to “win” against the other agent but to find a strategy that builds enough trust and cooperation to keep the negotiations moving towards an agreement.

Start with an assessment

Before you can respond effectively, you need to understand who you’re dealing with. I use three lenses to evaluate my negotiation counterpart:

Skill level: Do they understand negotiation theory—or are they winging it?

Negotiation Style: Are they collaborative, compliant, or competitive?

Motivation: Are they focused on outcomes—or driven by ego?

Identifying these patterns helps you choose the right approach from the start, rather than wasting time on strategies that won’t work.

From there, I identify which “agent archetype” I’m dealing with. Here are five of the most common:

The Ghost – Ignores messages, gives vague responses

Strategy: Stay persistent, switch communication mediums, appeal to their self-interest, use humor when appropriate, or escalate if necessary.

The Bulldog – Pushy, combative, purely transactional

Strategy: Don’t engage in the fight. Ask clarifying questions, stay calm, and redirect the conversation to underlying interests rather than positions.

The Rookie – Nervous, script-driven, inconsistent

Strategy: Lead gently, earn their trust, motivate with vision of success, and educate through your own professional example.

The Bluffer – Overpromises, bends facts, creates false urgency

Strategy: Stay grounded in data and realistic timelines, manage your emotions, and don’t get swept up in their narrative.

The Performer – Dramatic, postures for effect, exaggerates everything

Strategy: Use calm facts, real deadlines, and emotional neutrality to deflate the unnecessary drama.

Once you’ve assessed who you’re dealing with, your objective becomes clear: create just enough collaboration to move the transaction forward.

Seven practical strategies that work

Here are the strategies I’ve found most effective when dealing with challenging counterparts:

Manage your emotions

Respond, don’t react. Don’t mirror aggression with aggression or ghosting with retaliation. If you can observe their behavior without absorbing it, you’ll be better equipped to choose the message that moves the negotiation forward.

Model professionalism

Communicate clearly and calmly, regardless of the medium. Craft thoughtful emails, speak strategically, and text more professionally than you would with friends. Stay solution-focused and don’t shame your counterpart—even when they’re making it difficult.

Ask questions, seek understanding

Approach with curiosity and grace. Asking questions signals that you’re interested in their client’s needs and invested in a collaborative outcome rather than just pushing your agenda.

Generate positive emotion

Helping your counterpart feel good about their role, their client, and the transaction builds trust—even if it’s subtle. Acknowledge their expertise or effort when you can do so genuinely.

Communicate their perspective

When people feel seen and heard, they become less defensive. Acknowledging their needs doesn’t mean agreeing—it means creating space for productive conversation.

Know when to elevate

You can’t bypass the agent, but you can contact their managing broker if the situation warrants it. Use this sparingly—it can backfire if done too early or with the wrong tone.

Document everything

Incompetence and obstruction aren’t just frustrating—they’re risky. Protect your client and yourself with clear documentation of all communications and decisions.

Understanding over judgment

Empathy is not approval—it’s understanding. And understanding your counterpart, even when they’re difficult, gives you the negotiation edge.

Not every agent has had the chance to learn true negotiation skills. It’s rarely part of licensing programs, and many training companies focus more on marketing and lead generation than communication and negotiation. But these skills are learnable. When agents are trained well, they show up with more confidence, clarity, and collaboration. That benefits everyone.

We all want the same things: more successful transactions, stronger client relationships, and a respected industry. Raising the professional bar isn’t just good ethics—it’s good business.

So the next time a negotiation starts to go sideways, pause. Take a breath. Look past the behavior and into the fear or pressure behind it. Your counterpart might be posturing because they don’t feel confident, or maybe they’re doing their best with limited tools. Either way, your skill can be the anchor that keeps the process on track.

Remember: you can’t control the other agent, but you can control your response. Make it count.

Have a negotiation challenge you’d like me to address in a future column? Send me a note. I answer every message myself. No AI bots here—just one human, talking to another, about how to get better at this work we care so much about.

Suze Cumming

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.