Lesson 4 of 6
Negotiate within the owner’s mandate
Understand asking prices, private minimums, gross sale proceeds and the limits of broker acceptance authority.
By DigiBroker · Updated
The asking price starts a domain negotiation. The owner's private minimum is the lowest authorized price a broker may accept within their mandate. An offer below that minimum needs the owner's approval. Keep the sale price separate from the owner's proceeds after fees.
What you will learn
- Distinguish public asking price from private authorization.
- Calculate the planned allocation without promising a payout.
The asking price is the starting point
The public asking price tells buyers what the owner is requesting. It is not proof of market value, a guaranteed outcome or an invitation for a broker to invent a different price. Begin negotiations from that ask and the owner's recorded instructions. All prices in this programme are gross US dollars: the total sale price before the planned allocation, not the seller's net proceeds.
A private minimum is a boundary, not a public discount. Keep it out of public listings, outreach messages and buyer-facing materials. The owner must explicitly authorize broker acceptance; a minimum amount by itself does not create permission. An eligible broker may only use current authorization within the eligible workflow. Control verification, publication review, accepted agreements, current selling access and correct attribution still matter.
Do not negotiate away someone else's rights
A buyer may have a different budget or propose instalments, conditions or additional assets. Record the actual proposal rather than silently treating it as the same deal. Below-minimum offers need an owner decision. A broker cannot accept one by assuming the owner would probably agree. Nor does authority over a price grant permission to transfer a website, trademark or other property that the owner has not offered.
Use the latest recorded price revision and exact offer version. Owners can change future instructions, while already accepted terms remain their own immutable record. If a form says the price or authority changed, reload and review it instead of repeatedly submitting an old screen. Buyer confirmation, operations approval and a purchase reservation remain separate steps after terms acceptance. No negotiation alone proves payment.
Worked example, not a completed sale
A fictional owner asks $12,500 and explicitly authorizes eligible broker acceptance at or above a private $10,000 floor. A $9,500 proposal requires the owner's approval. A qualifying $10,000 completed attributed sale would allocate $7,000 to the owner, $2,000 gross commission to the broker and $1,000 to DigiBroker before provider costs. Those are planned allocation amounts, not money earned merely because the buyer proposed that price.
Practise the decision
For that fictional mandate, consider offers of $9,500, $10,000 and $11,000. Write which requires an owner decision and which could fall within authority if every other requirement were satisfied. Then add a buyer condition that includes a website. Explain why the price threshold alone does not authorize accepting the extra condition.
- Start from the current ask and exact owner mandate.
- Protect the private minimum.
- Escalate below-floor or changed-scope proposals.
- Check the current revision and preserve accepted terms.