As Fiduciaries, Watch What You Share With Other Agents

As Realtors@ we are bound to a certain standard of ethics. We have fiduciary responsibility to our clients at all times. As a rule I would say our industry does a decent job of representing our clients. The challenge is that we often give away information that seems innocent but in reality can negatively impact a negotiation for your clients.

I point this out only because we have an upcoming deadline that we need to be very aware of. The expiration of the first time buyer tax credit seems to be a very real deadline with no talk of extension. This is a situation you can help your clients in a few ways...

1. Advise your clients about the very real possibility of home prices rising prior to the deadline. We saw that in October in our area, and this weekend we had multiple offer situations on 2 of our listings. We should advise our clients to act prior to the deadline. This may save them money and more importantly may allow them to get into their first choice home.
2. As fiduciaries, we need to be careful about seemingly innocent conversations with other agents. This weekend every agent I talked to was working with first time buyers. We shouldn't be giving out that information to a listing agent. If you think about it, if a seller knows your clients are first time buyers who don't have time to buy another home and get the tax credit, all of the negotiation power gets transferred to the seller for the remainder of the buying process. What happens when your buyers find out that there is mold or hail damage on the roof? The sellers are now in a very strong negotiating position unless they are also trying to take advantage of their tax credit.

I realize this is a dry and boring post and yet it is so easy to transfer the power in a negotiation. The words "My buyers are first time buyers" sound innocent enough...which is why we need to be aware of them.