REAL ESTATE CONVERSATIONS
March 25th, 2009 categories: Market Trends
Way back in August of 2008, when I was a neophyte blogger, I borrowed ideas from my friend, Keahi Pelayo, a Realtor in Honolulu. Visits to my site are increasing rapidly and I feel that this is a good time to re-visit the ideas I talked about then. I LOVE being a real estate professional–I have the wonderful opportunity to help people in the sale or purchase of one of their most significant assets. This requires me to have ongoing consulting and advisory conversations about all aspects of a transaction. I classify these conversations in 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 you can 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 that will block your view.
- There are lots and lots of other “good news” conversations.
Hard conversations that I don’t want to have with my buyers and sellers and I HAVE to have them are:
- Your loan is 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.
- Right now 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 loan process doesn’t appear to be going well. You may want to consider canceling the sale.
- We have been on the market 30 days and have not had any offers. Based on this activity level, it is time to consider reducing 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 have the easy conversations, it takes an experienced professional to have the hard conversations. By now you are probably thinking, what’s the point? The point is this–a truly professional Realtor 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 postponed, the greater the potential issue can grow in magnitude. 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 the transaction. The Realtor’s job is to be sure that the client has the best information for making the decision that is right for them.
Do you need a conversation with a Realtor? If you do please call me at 312-981-2360 or my cell phone, 312-607-1306. Or do feel free to e-mail me.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Market Trends. 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.
