Page 27 - Bulletin Vol 27 No 2 - May - Aug. 2022 FINAL

Finance Article | Lease Negotiations

Landlord Intimidation Tactics – Three Personalities to watch for in every negotiation

By Evan Gasman

In the world of commercial real estate, the majority of properties are owned by people who are very
savvy at their core business model: real estate investing. Smart landlords know that by using certain
tactics during negotiations, they can back tenants into a corner. This keeps more money in their hands
and out of the tenant’s pockets, which is their objective.
Though most landlords would these tactics are just them being better at business than their
opposing tenant, healthcare providers routinely experience these tactics as “intimidation”. Profession-
al landlords know intimidation works. While most landlords might think of themselves as being good
they can a
tenant from exercising any leverage over them. After all, it’s just business, right?

WINNING (OR LOSING) THROUGH INTIMIDATION

Robert Ringer is a well known real estate expert, speaker, and author. After spending years in the real
estate business being lied to, ripped off, cheated, outsmarted and crushed by his counterparts in deals,
he wrote the book Winning Through Intimidation. In it, Ringer explains why business deals can be
intimidating and how we can avoid the mental pitfalls that cause us to fall victim to intimidation. It’s
Ringer’s categorization of the types of people that we deal with in many real estate transactions that
stands out and serves as a paradigm shift for negotiation going forward. In short, he says that there are
three types of people in real estate negotiations and, analogous to a poker match, each one will ‘take
your chips’ if you let them.

1.The person who lets you know from the start that their goal is to take all of your chips and they’re
not sorry about it either.
They told you how they’re going to play the game and, in many ways, it’s refreshing and sometimes
easier to respect this person when the game is over. There’s no misplaced trust.
2.The person who says they have no interest in taking all of your chips, but they intend to anyway.
They’ll say they want you to be treated fairly, but this isn’t true. They’re a shark and they’re dangerous.
They can lure you into what seems like a trusting relationship, but it’s based on pure deceit.

3.The person who says they’re not interested in taking your chips, and they actually mean it. But
somehow and for some reason, in the end, they still go after your chips.
This person is not a shark, and they’re not malicious either, so it is easier to defend yourself against
their chip-stealing ways. “Don’t expect even the most ethical people to live up to your moral expecta-
tions of them 100 per-cent of the time,” Ringer says. “All people, at one time or another, deviate from
their moral beliefs. They are sometimes hypocritical.”

For the sake of argument, there is a fourth and incredibly rare type of person that will never take your
chips no matter what happens and regardless of any circumstance. However, you can rest assured that
person is not likely to be a landlord or a seller of commercial real estate! The point of this poker

Nassau County Dental Society ⬧ (516) 227-1112 | 27