What Triathlon Training Taught Me About Negotiating Luxury Real Estate
Luxury Real Estate · Negotiation · Las Vegas
There's a moment in a triathlon, somewhere in the middle of the bike leg, legs burning, wind in your face, when your mind starts negotiating with your body. You can slow down. No one will know. This is already hard enough.
That moment is where races are won or lost. Not at the finish line.
I've thought about that a lot over the years, and the more I've worked with buyers and sellers at the highest level of the Las Vegas Valley luxury market, the more I recognize it: the threshold where most people want to ease up is exactly where the outcome is decided.
"Push your body hard in the morning and you can handle anything that comes your way — the negotiating table included."
The Training Block No One Talks About
When you're preparing for a triathlon, the visible work... the miles logged, the early mornings, the brick workouts, is only part of what you're building. What serious athletes are really developing is a tolerance for sustained discomfort, an ability to make sound decisions when everything in your body is telling you to stop, and a deep trust in the preparation that got you to race day.
Luxury real estate at the highest level operates the same way. The part most people see, the listing, the showing, the offer, is the race. What they don't see is everything that happens before: the research, the relationship-building, the scenario planning, the quiet work of understanding not just a property's value, but what it means to the right buyer or seller at this particular point in their life.
That's where outcomes are shaped.
Pacing Is Strategy
One of the hardest lessons in endurance sport: going out too fast is not ambition, it's a liability. The athletes who understand pace — who can sit in discomfort without reacting to it — tend to finish stronger than those who burn everything early.
In negotiation, this translates directly. When an offer comes in below expectations, the instinct is to react, to counter aggressively or dismiss the conversation entirely. But pace matters. I've seen transactions that started with a significant gap close successfully because both sides were given room to move without losing face. I've seen others collapse because someone couldn't resist the early sprint.
My job, in part, is to hold the pace when emotion wants to take over, to read both the room and the market data, and advise on timing with the same calm a well-prepared athlete carries into mile 20 of a bike leg.
The Taper Is Part of the Work
Athletes taper before a race: they reduce volume, rest deliberately, and arrive at the start line ready. It looks like doing less. It is, in fact, the final investment in performance.
In a complex transaction, particularly at the estate or high-rise level, where due diligence and financing structures can be intricate, there are moments when slowing down is the right move. When the correct answer is to pause, gather information, and resist the pressure to force a close.
Clients who've worked with me know I won't push a transaction across the finish line at the expense of getting it right. The deliberate pause — the ask to take 24 hours, to review a document carefully, to get the right advisor on a call, isn't hesitation. It's preparation.
You Train for the Conditions You Don't Control
Triathletes train in heat. In wind. On courses they've never seen. Because race day doesn't care what conditions you'd prefer.
The Las Vegas luxury market doesn't either. I've represented clients through rising rate environments and falling ones, through inventory surges and genuine scarcity, through transactions that moved fast because the moment was right and others that required patience most agents wouldn't have asked their clients for. Every condition teaches you something.
What I bring to a negotiation isn't just market knowledge. It's the accumulated experience of having been in uncomfortable situations and navigated through them without flinching.
Whether you're considering listing a significant property, acquiring in a community like Summerlin or MacDonald Highlands, or exploring investment-grade assets across the Las Vegas Valley, the preparation that goes into representing you happens long before we sit across a table from anyone.
When the moment gets hard, and in significant transactions, it most certainly can, that's exactly when preparation pays.
I'd welcome the conversation.
Ashley McCormick · Global Real Estate Advisor · IS LUXURY Member, REALM Global · RealTrends Verified Top 1.5% Nationally ashleymccormickhomes.com · Lic# S.0047742
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