Setting Expectations: If There is Something Specific You Want or Need From Your Real Estate Agent, Don't Keep it a Secret
Setting expectations is a must for any business owner in dealing with their clientele. As a Northern Virginia real estate agent, I am careful to set expectations of what I will do for my buyers, sellers and even cooperating agents that I work with on a sales transaction. I think it's important that people I'm working with understand what I will do, when I will do it and so forth.
Of course, setting expectations is a two way street. If a client, fellow agent, lender, title company or builder has specific needs or requirments of me, I need to know. Here's a great example, even though it's not an expectation of me.
I took some Buyers to a builder earlier this month and they wrote a contract for a new home. It's a very exciting process between writing the offer, picking upgrades and colors, that expectations a client may have can go without being expressed. Having been through the new home construction process before, my Buyers had been left disappointed in their prior purchase. The prior builder had set an expectation with all of their buyers that they would have bows on the front door after Settlement. Well, these buyers had been the one home that had not received a bow and that made them feel bad.
So in wrapping up the sales contract with the bulider of their move-up home, these Buyers made a special request. They asked for a bow on their front door after Settlement. It was a simple request, and one that the builider, even though it wasn't their policy to do so, was happy to comply with. To make sure the builder understood what the Buyers wanted, I sent a photo of the bow that was on my own front door from the same builder the Buyers had previosly bought from. They Buyers set their expectation and the builder now knows what it takes to meet it.
If you have a specific expectation from your real estate agent, lender, builder or other professional, don't keep it a secret. Let us know and we'll let you know if we can meet it.
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