o admits he covets
the house but cannot quite meet the purchase price is much more apt
to get the benefit of easier terms.

Real estate buying is still a dicker business. Get your own idea of
values and then make an offer--to the broker. It is part of his job to
negotiate this difference between asking and actual purchasing price.
Theoretically buyer and seller should be able to meet and discuss the
little matter of price in sensible and friendly fashion. Actually,
there is usually as much need of a diplomat here as between two
nations. One very successful broker recently admitted that he tries to
keep buyer and seller apart as much as possible when negotiating the
details of price, terms, concessions and the like. He stated that it
is amazing how ordinarily sensible people, in the heat of a dicker
over a piece of property, can get at a practical deadlock over the
disposal of a cord of wood or whether a cupboard, worth possibly five
dollars, is to be left with the house or removed.

So keep your temper, especially when it is a question of property you
really want. We have known people who were turned aside from an ideal
place for which they had hunted months, because the seller failed to
fall in with some totally unimportant detail or because they didn't
like something his lawyer said or the way he said it. Sellers may be
cantankerous and their lawyers exasperating, but remember, you do not
inherit them along with the property. Once the latter has been
acquired, which is your real objective, they pass out of the picture
along with your irritation at them.

In buying any property, however, make sure that the title is clear.
The author of the old hymn, "When I can read my title clear to
mansions in the skies," must have been familiar with the complications
attendant on acquiring earthly domiciles. In other words, if the place
on which you have set your heart is suffering from that obscure
complaint known as a "cloudy title," it is something to be let alone
unless the seller can clear it. By this term is meant that somewhere
in the chain of ownership from the original land grant, some seller
could not give a clear, warranted title.

There are many contributing causes for such a condition, particularly
with country property in the older sections where wills and deeds were
not always drawn with clarity and skill. Old second or third
mortgages, presumably paid, for which satisfactions were never
recorded; tax liens that