I had another thought. Might be that this is a good time for complete honesty. If you find a need to compromise between your husbands views and your own you might tell them, "Look, we should have taken the $4000 hit but to be honest, we got blindsided by a little ignorance. We thought maybe you went lower than you were willing to pay cause you thought we were going to haggle. We would have accepted the $4000 hit but figured this was just the way it worked - we have an asking price, you counter, we counter and we end up in the middle. We can't afford the $9000 hit but are now sorry we didn't accept your first offer."

Everybody plays games - not playing games is refreshing and you might get them to come clean if you lead the way. Just a thought.