When my search for a house in Mumbai began on 17th January 2010 I always knew that it is not going to be easy. With Mumbai property market being controlled by a closely knit network of brokers, it almost became a nightmare. After a thorough combing of the Mumbai market for 4 days, I short listed Borivalli-Kandiwalli strech to focus my energies on as the area fitted my budget as well as my requirements.
After searching the area in vain for a day, Vishal suggested a broker to me. I checked 4 houses which were finalized by Dad through him.
But before going to have a look at the houses, my father took me for a reccee of the societies where I was going to check out the flats.
The brokers in Mumbai share the flats which they possess with other brokers and split the brokerage for the shared flats. Out of the 4 flats which I was going to check out, 2 were shared flats (which I came to know only after visiting all the 4). Of these my broker strongly recommended against the one whose society, Gagan Towers, I had liked the most; for the broker who possessed the keys was not trustworthy. He pushed a little harder for the 2 flats which were not shared. Harder enough to raise my eyebrows.
Fortunately, I didn’t like the flat in the Gagan Tower. I even turned down the 2 flats possessed by my Broker and instead, I liked the flat which was earlier not on the list in Gundecha Towers. But It turned out to fulfill my entire criterion.
Though I had only one final single choice (which the broker didn’t knew), I designed an on the spot negotiation game which I explained my dad to help me with -
1. We would start to negotiate for the flat of Gagan Towers, for which the broker is going to stall us as he was not in good terms with his actual broker (I had sensed this when he wanted me to avoid the flat even before I had seen it).
2. We would present Gundecha as our second and final choice. This will make the broker feel that he has made way with us thus making a sort of bond (relationship). I wanted to exploit this bond which actually existed only in his mind.
15 minutes after we had declared Gagan Towers as our preferred choice to our broker, he turned his speaker phone on while in conversation with the flat’s broker trying to prove us that we will not be in safe hands if we didn’t revise our choice. And as per the plan we did.
But the adamant broker of the Gundecha towers was fixated on a rent of Rs 18000 per month with a deposit of Rs 125000. And now it was our turn to roll the dice and so did we by asking our broker to get us a deal with a rent of Rs 16000 and deposit of Rs 80,000 to be paid in 3 installments spread over 2 months.
With deliberations for over an hour and few anxious moments the deal was pulled through with our demands being accepted. The only change being that the deposit was to be paid in 2 installments.
Now came the most difficult part and that was of the brokerage. Unlike any other city, there are 2 clauses to the brokerage in Mumbai –
1. If it’s the broker’s flat, the brokerage is the rent of 1 month and if it’s a flat shared by another broker, the brokerage is of 2 months.
2. The brokerage is repaid whenever the agreement is to be revised at the end of the year.
More importantly, though the deposit was recoverable, the brokerage was not.
Negotiating down the brokerage to one and a half month rent was not very tough. But that was where the buck stopped. The broker having an upper hand with the deal cut as per our demands for a flat of our choice. I was waiting for one wrong move from the broker which he did after almost half an hour into the discussion. He asked us to take the deal or leave it as it couldn’t be pushed further. (I didn’t believe him as I still saw scope).
The very precisely developed ”Bond” came into play and I asked the broker that if this does not get through he needs to give me a better deal for a similar flat available directly with him as I am not going to any other broker. In this way he also does not need to split his brokerage.
In brief, I presented him the image of a gullible customer with a cavernous dilemma.
The deal was in a very advance stage with even the landlord giving his consent to his broker. If the deal broke here for a meager sum of 5-8 thousand, the flat’s broker would have blamed my broker of sabotaging it and pulling the customer in for his own flats thus eating his brokerage. He could not have afforded this in his closely knit circle.
Though I could have pushed him a little more to 18,000, but I decided to settle in for Rs 20,000.
I believe, I paid him an extra Rs2000 for the fun I had with him in maneuvering and molding him.
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