Our Active Rain Community has recently been involved in a discussion about Realtors and how we view our jobs. How we care about our clients, and even referring to ourselves as counselors and advisers who care about our clients. First, I need to say....of course we care.....but we are not in the business of making friends, we are business people, and Real Estate is a business.
Real Estate is a very personal business and our clients become quite emotional during the process. As people, we spend a lot of time with our buyers and sellers, we hold their hands. As Realtors, we explain and negotiate and problem solve. Our clients need both sides of us to make it through. We often have the opportunity to meet the other principals and the other agent. When everything is going smoothly, we can all laugh and look forward to the future. But the minute there is a negotiation needed or hiccup in the process, things often turn ugly.....Why?
We are not friends, yet often the animosity develops because one side or the other thinks we are. Usually this is the result of an agent who suddenly realizes that the other Realtor is working on behalf of their client, not just to close the deal. That is what our job is. If I am representing the buyer, and we find a problem during the home inspection, it's my dutyto ask for a repair. This is not a personal attack on the seller, his home, or the other agent. We are not all in a support group who's purpose is to close the deal at all costs...working together to make sure we can all get along. It's a business deal, sometimes we walk away.
I have recently run into a situation where the agent just went nuts. There is no other way to say it. We were close to the end of a transaction and we discovered a roof leak.....it's been raining. We still had all of our home inspection contingencies in place and after getting several bids to fix the problem, we submitted a repair request. Not that it matters, but my clients are a young couple with a baby and no extra money to make repairs after they move in. They were not asking for new paint or prettier carpet....they didn't want to move into a home with a significant roof leak.
The sellers and their agent just went nuts. They felt betrayed! Betrayed??? What? We are not friends, we are in business. The agent called me to ask what I could do to make this go away. I told him that we could make this go away, if his sellers fixed the roof. Then he went nuts. Yelling and screaming about how great his sellers were and that they had accepted an FHA buyer just because they liked my buyers.....etc. He went on to say we were trying to take advantage of the sellers and that I was not being professional.....blah, blah, blah. And then....the sellers fixed the problem. We closed!
I know that this is an emotion-charged business, but we are not friends!!! I am not my buyers or sellers friends either. I'm their representative....I care about them, and often like them. But I can represent clients I don't like and still do a great job for them. I do have agents I work with whom I have a great relationship with, yet I can also work with a difficult agent. It's a business....does anyone think that a plumber is only going to work with people he likes?
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