If you are a real estate agent whose business relies on relocations, or a corporate executive trying to analyze an offer to join a new company, negotiating the deal for the relocation is much more important these days. Those getting relocation packages are now facing additional pressures as the slow housing market is making closing employment contracts more difficult.

Many times large corporations will offer a relocation package to new employees. When selling homes was easy and properties were moving fast, the packages often would include home sales guarantees and incentives. But with the slow housing markets in major regions in the country, these packages are becoming more stingy and a bigger negotiation point for the employees moving to their new company.

The last thing a new employee needs is a home that will not sell and the pressures of trying to get themselves settled in a new job and home. If you are a real estate agent and deal with relocations you already know that the deals offered by the relo companies are getting stingier by the day. Make sure that you are covered and not working a deal for too little profit.

In another word, every process of the relocation industry is getting much more difficult to deal with.

“A lot of people are reluctant to accept a position unless the company is willing to take over the responsibility of selling their house,” said Emory Mulling, chairman of the Mulling Corp., a firm that provides services that include outplacement and career transition, executive coaching and retained search.
In the past nine months, Mulling has seen about a dozen “serious cases” where the fate of job offers hinged on home sales. The executives lived in California, New York, Texas and parts of the Midwest.
“In three cases, the companies agreed to buy the homes when they originally said they wouldn’t,” Mulling said. “Four people declined the offers because the companies wouldn’t buy the house.”
“Most of these assignments are mission critical,” said Dale Jones, a managing partner for executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. “So the softness in the housing market rarely will scuttle the deal, but oftentimes it may delay the deal or cause the deal to be more expensive.” via The Columbus Dispatch

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