What's the most you should pay before you walk away?
Sellers anchor high because most buyers show up with a feeling instead of a number. This sheet turns three comparable sales into a defensible maximum bid, then prices your target and opening offer off it. Keep the breakeven table open while you haggle so you know exactly what caving costs.
Personal Finance Starter Data Table free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Walk-Away Price Calculator
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
One click fills the what-if table: what each possible settlement price means in years to breakeven and dollars past your walk-away.
- Walk-away price
- $63,000 72% of the $86,900 asking
- Target price
- $59,850 95% of walk-away
- Opening offer
- $53,550 85% of walk-away
- Breakeven if you pay asking
- 5.1 yrs vs 3.8 yrs at your walk-away
The comps support a fair value of $68,000. After $5,000 of fixes and fees, your walk-away price is $63,000, and the $86,900 sticker sits $23,900 past it. Open at $53,550, aim for $59,850, and remember that every $9,000 you shave off the price cuts about half a year off breakeven.
The model
A 2021 machine is listed at $86,900. Three comparable sales of the same model line bracket it, and the buyer expects $18,000 a year in net cash from putting it to work.
| Seller asking price | $86,900 |
| Comparable sales | $78,000 (2023) · $58,000 (2019) · $33,000 (2014) |
| Missing attachments & repairs | $4,300 |
| Transport & title | $700 |
| Expected annual net cash | $18,000 |
| Settlement prices tested | 100% down to 70% of asking |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
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Every model like this one, and the method behind them: What-if analysis in Google Sheets.