Welcome to the third NREB Premium briefing. This one is about a negotiation habit that quietly costs your clients money on both sides of the table.

Here is the situation you are walking into on Monday. A buyer finds a home they like. It has been sitting a few weeks. Your buyer says what almost every buyer says: "Let's offer under asking." So you write it, the seller counters, you meet somewhere in the middle, and everyone calls it a win. It is a perfectly normal transaction.

It is also, in this specific market, frequently the weaker deal for your buyer and the more expensive one for your seller. The reason has nothing to do with negotiating skill and everything to do with which number is on the table.

Two things happened at once, and together they change the math.

First, rates moved the wrong way. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed averaged 6.55% for the week of July 16, up from 6.49% the week before and the highest reading since August 2025. Sam Khater, Freddie Mac's chief economist, noted that purchase application demand has weakened recently, even while affordability is more favorable than a year ago and inventory keeps rising. So buyers are feeling the payment, and some are pulling back because of it.

Second, sellers are already responding, and more than most agents realize. Redfin found that sellers gave buyers concessions in 46.2% of home sales in the three months ending May 31, up from 43.1% a year earlier. That is the highest share for any spring since Redfin started tracking it in 2019. The reason is straightforward supply and demand: by Redfin's count there are roughly 47% more sellers than buyers in the market right now.

Put those together. In the markets Redfin tracks, close to half of recent sales already included a concession, and the number of sellers willing to make one is climbing, precisely because the payment is the thing standing between them and a buyer. Meanwhile Realtor.com's midyear update has home price growth slowing to about 1.2% for the year, which is below inflation, meaning prices are drifting sideways in real terms.

Which brings up the part most agents are getting wrong.

Here is the idea worth sitting with. Suppose a seller is willing to give up ten thousand dollars to make a deal happen. There are two completely different ways to hand that money over, and they produce wildly different results.

Option one is the price cut. Take ten thousand off the purchase price. Spread across a 30-year mortgage, that lowers the buyer's monthly payment by somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty dollars. It is real, and it is small.

Option two is the concession. Apply that same ten thousand to a temporary rate buydown or closing costs. Applied to a buydown, it can cut the buyer's payment by several hundred dollars a month in the early years, when money is tightest. Same dollars out of the seller's pocket. Dramatically different effect on the buyer's life.

That gap is the whole issue. Both sides of the table routinely fixate on the sale price because it is the number everyone understands, while the lever that actually moves the payment sits right there, unused, at a moment when a large share of sellers are already agreeing to pull it.

There is a second difference worth understanding, and it is the one agents most often get wrong in both directions. A price reduction lowers the recorded sale price itself, which becomes the number that shows up as a comp. A concession leaves the contract price intact and is disclosed separately as a seller credit. That distinction is real, but it is narrower than the way it usually gets pitched. Concessions are disclosed on the closing statement and typically in the MLS, and appraisers can see them and adjust for them. So a credit is not a way to hide anything. It keeps the headline price standing while the concession is documented alongside it, and how much weight an appraiser gives it is their call, not yours.

The net is close between the two routes, but not identical. Because commission and transfer taxes are usually calculated on the contract price, a seller who gives a credit at the higher price often nets slightly less than one who cuts the price by the same amount. On a mid-priced home the gap is typically small, sometimes a few hundred dollars, but it is real, and the way to settle it is to have your title company or closing attorney run estimated settlement statements both ways rather than assuming.

None of this means concessions are always the right ask. There are situations where a price cut genuinely is the better tool, and there are limits on how much a seller is even allowed to contribute before a lender flags the deal. Knowing which lever to pull, how much to ask for, and how to explain it to a client who only hears "we're paying their costs" is the difference between an agent who runs a negotiation and one who just relays offers.

Below, I have laid out the actual payment math side by side so you can show a client rather than tell them, the concession limits by loan type that will kill a deal if you exceed them, the buyer-side script for structuring the ask, the seller-side script for accepting one without feeling fleeced, the four objections you will hear from both directions, a one-page explainer you can hand either client, and the specific situations where you should skip concessions entirely and just cut the price. Starting with the number that reframes the entire conversation….