As real estate agents you spend so much time and effort trying to find and sign clients that the occasional decision to untangle from one before closing a transaction has to hurt.
But once in a while that may be the case. For whatever reason there’s a disconnect, and in spite of all your experience, all the business classes you may have taken and industry seminars you may have attended, there’s no playbook for how to preemptively say goodbye to someone you were working with on a home purchase.
Well, here’s how one longtime REALTORⓡ faces the challenge of a client who doesn’t openly value his professional guidance, can’t or won’t make progress after months of house hunting, or seriously considers inane advice from friend or relative know-it-alls.
Jeffrey Decatur is a broker associate at RE/MAX Capital, in Latham, New York. With 30 years of real estate experience, he makes it his business to, above all, manage the expectations of clients. He does that through educational conversations, which he calls ‘Jeffrey speeches’ before the process of viewing homes on the market begins.
“I start with a consultation with Mr. and Mrs. Buyer,” he explains. “I tell them this is what the market is doing. Here’s the MLS. I’m going to show you exactly what I’m looking at. Here’s the absorption rates for our area, here’s the average days on the market and here’s the average sale-to-list price ratio.
“What this is telling me, I explain, is that in this county, the average house is selling in eight days for 104% of list price. So they see what I see. Meaning they very likely won’t have weeks to make a decision on a house. When they see that for themselves, after maybe getting burned by the market a little, then all of a sudden their level of urgency goes from second gear to fifth gear.”
Problems arise when Decatur provides the statistics and his expertise but the client doesn’t take heed for whatever reason.
“You have to adapt to the market, but some don’t; you can hit them with logic but they just don’t get it,” he says. “I’ll give those people a few opportunities, but if they don’t catch on I won’t continue to work with them. If someone needs protection, someone I want to take under my wing because they’re too naive for their own good, I give them a little more leeway than the people that challenge me because they read an article somewhere, or Zillow said this, or their mother said that. I’m like alright, let’s see how that works out for you. I’m gonna cast them away as I don’t have time to deal with their kind of crazy because they’re not listening.”
Then there are times when Decatur has to take a back seat with nervous people repped by other agents who move forward to buy a house for which he is the listing agent. If the process doesn’t move along reasonably well he gets involved.
“I’m concerned when somebody sells my listing if they’re newer in the business and don’t know how to handle their client,” he says. “Maybe the inspection showed something, and suddenly their buyer is uncomfortable, they’re afraid or they’re this or that. Their expectations were not managed.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to know that when somebody starts dragging their feet and stalling, they’re not going through with the transaction. It’s still more of a seller’s market we’re in here, so it behooves me to fish or cut bait as soon as humanly possible. If I was in a buyer’s market I would hold onto those people like a dog with a bone.
“But now they’re scared, they’ve got fomo (fear of missing out), and have 19 real estate experts in their family all pointing them in different directions. I know they’re not buying the house but their agent is too inexperienced to know they’re not. I’m gonna call it what it is and give them the option to get out. That way they cut bait way sooner and I’m able to get it back on the market while there’s still 11 people looking, instead of waiting another month and those 11 have all bought something else and I have to start with a whole new crop of people.”
As for when he must cut the cord with his own client, Decatur has a strategy that takes the unpleasantness out of the equation. He more or less lets them do it.
“I just keep telling them that we need to have a discussion about the market and the way it’s going,” he says, “and that I dont think they’re interpreting the market the same way I am. I throw the questions they have about why things haven’t worked out right back at them, asking ‘what do you think went wrong here?’ ”
Thus the parting, while not a sweet sorrow, is not a bitter one either.
