As I read through some of blogs on this site, I ran into a number of Tales of Dark Side titles, which describe buyers, sellers and agents that you would rather not have the pleasure to deal with. I term this the 2% Rule, which simply states that 2% of the people cause 98% of the problems. I find the rule is pretty universal whether you’re dealing with a real estate transaction or your next door neighbor. My partner and I sponsor a real estate web site www.RockyMtnMLS.com which allows subscribers / clients to search for homes on the MLS. The site is designed to be cooperative; that is as clients find homes of interest they can book mark the property and allow us to research the details and set showings. As part of this process when a client determines they want to put an offer on a home we do a comparative market analysis of the neighborhood to insure the price offered is consistent with current values.

As I stated earlier we have both clients and subscribers, clients are persons we have met with and have an idea of their time frame for moving, price range, etc. and had an opportunity to counsel regarding inspections, warranties, and contracts. Subscribers have found our site via a search engine, flyer, or advertisement and may be simply shopping and may vanish or they give us a call to meet with us and see homes.

I was contacted by one subscriber who would either call me or send me e-mails regarding various communities and sub-divisions. After a couple of months it was obvious that he was ready to start previewing homes and was getting serious about buying, so I suggested we meet for a cup of coffee to discuss his plans. It was at this point it became obvious I had a hit one of the 2% that was going to be a problem. He told me he had already visited a number of homes and was either dealing directly with the listing agent or builder or just having agents run him around to see homes with no buyers agency contract. When I attempted to explain this was not in his best interest, that the listing agent had a responsibility by contract to get the highest possible price for their seller and without a buyers agency contract we were limited to the information we could share with him. His response was that he was a Managing Director for his company, he knew how to negotiate and he had no need for an agent. What he failed to realize was he didn’t have all the information, time on market and previous sold history of similar properties are key to determining an offering price. He soon vanished from our web site and I let it go as “you can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

Recently I was checking sales in a sub-division that I keep a close track of and discovered lo and behold he had purchased a home there. Out of curiosity I ran a market analysis on previous sales and compared it to what he paid. Sometimes the universe has a great sense of justice he had paid over $45,000 above market for his home. Assuming a little bickering goes on in any transaction I suspect we would have saved him $25,000 - $30,000 all for a cup of coffee. I think the financial commercial says it all. It pictures a patient on the phone to his doctor while he’s holding a scalpel. The doctor is instructing him to make an incision between the second and third abdominal muscle and he’s asking “shouldn’t you be doing this?’ The message is clear financial mistakes can be just as painful.