Real Estate Conversations
August 23rd, 2008 categories: Buying, Selling
This is a direct steal from a friend of mine in Honolulu, Keahi Pelayo, I have changed a few things to reflect our downtown Chicago condo market. For some really good information about Honolulu real estate, visit Keahi’s blog.
Real estate is a great business. As a Realtor, I have the opportunity to represent people in the sale or purchase of one of their most significant assets. As a result, I am required to have ongoing consulting and advisory conversations concerning various aspects of a transaction. I classify these conversations into two groups, easy and hard.
Almost anyone can have the easy conversations. These include things like the following:
- Congratulations, your offer was accepted.
- Your loan is approved.
- You received a lower interest rate than we expected.
- The seller took our price on the offer.
- The seller agreed to close earlier and this will allow you to move in when you wanted to.
- The seller agreed to pay $5,000 of your closing costs.
- The buyer is willing to pay full price.
- The buyer is paying cash.
- The city has bought that empty lot for a small park–nothing can be built to block your view.
- There are lots and lots of other “good news” conversation.
Hard conversations that I don’t want to have with my buyers and sellers and I HAVE to have them are:
- Your loan was approved, but it’s at a higher rate than you wanted.
- The buyer will be using a VA loan and this means you will be paying more closing costs.
- Based on the condominium minutes, it appears that there may be a special assessment in the near future.
- At this time nobody knows what will be built on that vacant lot. If it is a high rise condominium building, your view will be blocked.
- The buyers loan approval was due on Monday the the loan process doesn’t apear to be going well. You may want to consider canceling the sale.
- We’ve been on the market 30 days and have not had any offers, based on this activity level, it is time to consider redcing the price.
- If we don’t reduce the price now, you could end up getting less money six months to a year from now.
While almost any real estate agent can havea the easy conversations, it takes an experienced professional to have hard conversations. By now you’re thinking what’s the point?
The point is this. A professional real estate agent is good at both conversations and goes out of their way to make sure that any required hard conversations are handled in a timely manner. Timing is key because the longer a hard conversation is put off, the greater a potential issue can grow in magnitude. In my experience, many agents “go underground” when it is time to deal with difficult conversations, especially about price reductions. A true professional wants to deliver a clear picture of the situation, possible solutions and potential outcomes of a course of action. Ultimately, the client is the one responsible for making the decision concerning their transaction. A Realtor’s job is to guide the process so that the client has the information to make the best decision for himself or herself.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Buying, Selling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Well said, it is not a realtors’ job to “sell” a particular house. Homes sell themselves. It is our job to be the intermediary and to keep deals together. It is the most experienced realtors who are able to do this.