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10 Tips for Lie-Proofing a Home Closing, Pt. 2

Pamela Meyer — 2010-08-02T10:30:00 00:00

Filed under: News

On Friday, HousingWatch published the first five of my tips for detecting lies related to closing on a home purchase. It's a little like a good card trick -- you have to pay careful attention to figure out what's really going on.

I wrote my book "Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception" to give ordinary people access to the professional techniques practiced by law enforcement negotiators and intelligence investigators. Here are tips six through 10 for those crucial just-before-the-finishing-line days:

6. Watch for the nonverbal tells. High stakes elicit high emotions - and the more intensely felt the emotion, the more likely it will leak out through slightly pursed lips, a half-shrug, or a smirk. Since a deceptive person will concentrate heavily on getting his words right, watch for anomalies in his body language - does he freeze his upper body, look down more often, slow his breathing and blink rate? Does he exhibit what's known by detectives as "post-interview relief" - a fleeting moment of relaxation when he's no longer being questioned about the tricky stuff?

If you went to the trouble of getting to know your negotiating partner's normal gestures -- the style and duration of his laugh, his typical standing or seated posture, his fidgeting patterns, you will be able to detect abnormal responses to particular lines of questioning. This process of observing your partner during normal times, in order to obtain a reliable reference point for measuring changes in behavior, is known by interrogators as "baselining."

7. Frame outcomes in terms of gain, not loss. Let's say a buyer initially offers 20 percent less than your asking price, but ultimately you both agree on a price that's 10 percent less. If you help him view it as a win - he got 10 percent off the original asking price - rather than a loss - he paid 10 percent more than he wanted - it will make a big difference in subsequent negotiations. Studies show that framing in terms of losses causes people to bargain harder and operate less ethically.

8. Ask the last crucial question - Is there anything you haven't told me? In one study, 100 percent of negotiators actively lied about, or failed to reveal a problem, if no one directly asked them about it. Liars are far more comfortable concealing information than falsifying it.

9. Get it in writing. After everything has been agreed to face-to-face, ask to get confirmation in an e-mail. With written documentation, there's no escape - there's no way an accused liar can say you misunderstood, or he expressed himself poorly, or you're flat-out misremembering what he told you.

10. Surprise! Bluffing might not be the best tactic. Continually reaffirm your integrity. A negotiation is a signalling system. If your partner signals that he is dishonest, you are likely to feel more justified in lying to him. Studies show that negotiators who suspect or are directly informed that they are expected to tell the truth, behave more honestly throughout the negotiation. So think again before you assume that we are all expected to bluff; it may not be in your best interest. People feel justified in lying when they think they're dealing with a liar. Signal to your partner that you are honest and you expect honesty in return. For example, tell him that the renovation you did on your basement was expressly done to code because "in our family, we don't break the law."

My overall message? Approach the negotiation in the spirit of win/win. Not only will you have a far less stressful time, you'll also cut down on the opportunity and temptation for your negotiating partner to lie. And hopefully you'll be moving into your new house with only the decor and furniture arrangement to worry about.

Pamela Meyer is founder and CEO of Simpatico Networks, a leading private label social networking company that owns and operates online social networks. She holds an MBA from Harvard, an MA in Public Policy from Claremont Graduate School, and is a Certified Fraud Examiner. She has extensive training in advanced interviewing and interrogation techniques, facial micro-expression reading, body language interpretation, statement analysis, and behavior elicitation techniques. For the book "Liespotting," she worked with a team of researchers over several years and completed a comprehensive survey of all of the published research on deception detection. The most interesting highlights from the research survey are included in the book, while additional new findings are regularly featured on her blog, www.Liespotting.com.

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.
Get property tax help from our experts.

************************************************

Want to learn more about home buying and home finance? If so, you won't want to miss
our online discussion with industry experts,
"What Works Now: Smart Moves When Buying a Home,"
created by AOL Real Estate in participation with Bank of America Home Loans.
Watch it now on AOL Real Estate.

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10 Tips for Lie-Proofing a Home Closing, Pt. 1

Pamela Meyer — 2010-07-30T17:35:00 00:00

Filed under: News

It's a tense time - you've found the perfect house or apartment - and now there's no going back. You're negotiating everything -- from the price, to the move-out date, to that cool light fixture. But woven into negotiations are multiple opportunities for deception. How can you lie-proof the close?

I wrote my book "Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception" to give ordinary people access to the professional techniques practiced by law enforcement negotiators and intelligence investigators. Here are the first five of my 10 tips for those crucial just-before-the-finishing-line days:

1. Be aware - you will be lied to. When the stakes are high, studies show that those given a chance to lie will almost always take that chance. And the bigger the sale (and the larger the potential losses) the more likely the parties involved in the transaction are to lie. Many who do lie when the stakes are so high, claim to feel little guilt - they see it as justifiable self defense. So keep your eyes wide open. The good news? With such high stakes, it's also easier to spot deception - the give-away clues are far more evident and easy to read.

Read on for more of Pamela Meyer's Liespotting tips.

2. Your best weapon - preparation. Assume your bargaining partner has Googled you, estimated your net worth and your salary and has determined whether or not you paid a fair price for your last house. Creepy? Maybe. Reality? Yes.

When you enter into a negotiation, you must prepare meticulously. Create a checklist:

What do you already know about the property?
What's the list of missing information you need in order to make an informed decision?
What information will you be expected to provide? Prepare it ahead of time so that you can focus on the negotiation process and not the data.
How does your negotiating partner perceive you? What specific beneficial outcomes would he get from a closed deal?
What is your real bottom line, assuming you won't get every concession?
What concessions are you willing to make?
What issues must be discussed?

3. Mentally rehearse the non-verbal negotiation. Deceptive parties will rehearse their words -- but rarely their gestures, yet studies show that 80 percent of communication is nonverbal. Imagine that you're sitting down, opening the conversation, asking questions, expressing disagreement. Athletes call this "visualization." They use it to prepare for upcoming competitions. You can do the same - so when you're in the midst of the real negotiation, it won't seem so alien, and you can concentrate on closing a fair deal.

4. Know what negotiators lie about. Research shows that there are at least four instances in which deception occurs:
Common Interests: Twenty-eight percent of us lie about common interests, saying things like "we are also in no hurry to close."
Bottom Line: Experienced negotiators know that a final offer is rarely a final offer. A walkaway point is often flexible, and there are few legal consequences (if any) to bluffing about it.
Elastic Information: Liars find it easy to justify distorting what's known as "elastic information" - things which can't be verified with certainty, like the cost of a renovation or the estimated time to implement it.
Material Facts: Both parties in a legal negotiation have an obligation to be truthful. Misrepresenting verifiable material facts is generally considered to be fraud. If you know that someone on your side of the transaction is mistakenly misrepresenting a material fact, you have an obligation to correct him. If you suspect that your bargaining partner is lying to you about an important fact, use your lie-spotting skills to dig deeper.

5. Negotiate face-to-face. One study that tracked deception on the phone, via e-mail, on IM's and in person, found that we lie twice as much on the phone than on e-mail, presumably due to the paper train that e-mail leaves. You can use e-mail to confirm difficult issues that were fully negotiated, but do the real negotiation face-to-face, when you are most likely to detect deception by observing your negotiating partner's body language. Find a relaxed, private meeting place and don't put the other party on guard. Ask questions in a friendly way until you have all of the information you need.

The next five tips will follow on Monday.

Pamela Meyer is founder and CEO of Simpatico Networks, a leading private label social networking company that owns and operates online social networks. She holds an MBA from Harvard, an MA in Public Policy from Claremont Graduate School, and is a Certified Fraud Examiner. She has extensive training in advanced interviewing and interrogation techniques, facial micro-expression reading, body language interpretation, statement analysis, and behavior elicitation techniques. For the book "Liespotting," she worked with a team of researchers over several years and completed a comprehensive survey of all of the published research on deception detection. The most interesting highlights from the research survey are included in the book, while additional new findings are regularly featured on her blog, www.Liespotting.com

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.
Get property tax help from our experts.

************************************************

Want to learn more about home buying and home finance? If so, you won't want to miss
our online discussion with industry experts,
"What Works Now: Smart Moves When Buying a Home,"
created by AOL Real Estate in participation with Bank of America Home Loans.
Watch it now on AOL Real Estate.

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6 Ways to Tell If Your Real Estate Agent Is Lying

Pamela Meyer — 2010-07-21T10:33:00 00:00

Filed under: News

It's a nagging question that often pops up during a property hunt. Is your real estate agent lying to you? You may look him in the eye and ask straight-out if there are any other offers, or if the basement has ever flooded, or how long the house has been on the market. But how do you know if he's telling the truth?

It's stressful enough finding a place you like and that's affordable without having to wonder whether you can trust those involved. When you're about to plunk down a few hundred thousand -- or a few million -- for a house, the honesty stakes are probably the highest they will ever get.

So how do you get the upper hand? By drawing on the same lie detection techniques and scientific research which for years have been used exclusively by the law enforcement and intelligence communities. I wrote my new book, "Liespotting: Proven Techniques for Detection Deception," (St. Martin's Press), with the aim of bringing this valuable information to the general public.

Here are some insider tips:
1) Prevent any deception from the start. Research shows that people are much more reluctant to lie to coworkers than strangers, most likely because they know their reputation is at stake. So the same works for your real estate agent. Let him know his good name rests in your hands. If you have a wide circle of friends, for example, you might suggest that if that basement does flood after you buy the house -- you're going to make sure people know about it online and in person.

2) Get a baseline. If you think you're going to be spending time with your agent, get an idea of what he's like when he's relaxed and not under stress. Look at the way he stands, the way he fidgets, the speed of his speech, his natural laugh, his gestures. That way you can spot if he acts differently when you ask difficult questions.

3) Observe body language. Liars don't rehearse their gestures -- just their words. The cognitive load is huge on them when they're trying to appear sincere, so it's harder for them to control their bodies. That translates into significant giveaway behaviors -- like freezing the upper body, lowering the voice or slowing the breathing. Watch closely what happens when you ask about that just-materialized rival's offer.

4) Watch for "post-interview relief." An odd phrase, but one that's often used among police interrogators. At the end of an interview with a suspect, experienced detectives know there's often a recognizable moment of relief -- a shift in posture, or a visibly more relaxed facial expression. It may be fleeting, but it's significant, and it's something interrogators are trained to look for. You should look for it, too. Be strategic in your questions and look carefully at your broker when you stop asking about that pesky basement -- and turn the conversation to the schools in the area.

5) Verbal tells. Although liars think carefully about their words, there are ways they reveal themselves unknowingly. For example, they could give you an inappropriate amount of detail in their response, much more than necessary, as if to prove they're telling the truth.. Or they could use what's known as "bolstering language." Liars want to sound convincing and earnest, so they'll often add emphatic phrases to their speech to reinforce their credibility. If you hear things like "To tell you the truth," "To be honest" or "I swear to God," take note and be on guard.

6) Surprise! It's not necessarily in the eyes. We all know that someone looks away a lot and avoids eye contact if they're lying, right? Well, think again. Studies show that liars may use more eye contact if they're attempting to deceive. The average rate of eye contact has been estimated to be 60 percent in a normal conversation; a liar may overcompensate to emphasize the veracity of what she's saying by looking at you more often. If the eyes gazing back at you are a little too steady, listen even more carefully.

A note of caution: All these examples are based on scientific evidence. But before you call an agent's bluff and back out of a contract, remember not to base your judgment on just one or two examples, however compelling they may appear. Look for clusters of clues, a number of different physical and verbal tells which differ from someone's baseline behavior. Otherwise someone fidgeting a lot could just be nervous -- or even have indigestion that day!

Pamela Meyer is founder and CEO of Simpatico Networks, a leading private label social networking company that owns and operates online social networks. She holds an MBA from Harvard, an MA in Public Policy from Claremont Graduate School, and is a Certified Fraud Examiner. She has extensive training in advanced interviewing and interrogation techniques, facial micro-expression reading, body language interpretation, statement analysis, and behavior elicitation techniques. For the book "Liespotting," she worked with a team of researchers over several years and completed a comprehensive survey of all of the published research on deception detection. The most interesting highlights from the research survey are included in the book, while additional new findings are regularly featured on her blog, Liespotting.

Want to read more about Liespotting? Check out Asylum's test of Pamela Meyer's deception detection techniques.

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.
Get property tax help from our experts.

************************************************

Want to learn more about home buying and home finance? If so, you won't want to miss
our online discussion with industry experts,
"What Works Now: Smart Moves When Buying a Home,"
created by AOL Real Estate in participation with Bank of America Home Loans.
Watch it now on AOL Real Estate.

Permalink | Email this | Comments