Navigating The Weirdness For Our Clients

Foreclosure and short sale offers that don't get an answer. HUD deals with monstrously insane and incomprehensible bureaucratic processes. Over-priced homes and low-ball offers. Lending practices that seem designed to not lend money. New regulations everywhere.

Our clients are being exposed to so much bizarre behavior in the marketplace right now, and almost all of it is counter-intuitive. They are having trouble understanding that this is how it works (or doesn't) right now. Little of it makes any sense, even to us, and we're the professionals that are supposed to make sense of it all for them.

We can describe what's going on, but how can we actually explain it?

When a bank, for instance, is clearly acting against its own financial self-interest in a short sale negotiation, we can talk about the disconnect between institutions and people. But how can our clients possibly process facts like "no one on the seller's side actually cares enough about whether you get to buy this house that they'll actually do something to help make that happen"?

And even if we could explain it, that isn't going to be enough.

The problems out there are systemic, but we have to understand that the effects are personal. Our clients are perceiving threats to their goals as these processes play out, and we're the ones they are counting on to solve them. I can talk to them all day about what idiots so and so are, but if I can't make the problem go away, I'm going to fail them, no matter how much they trust me.

As we always have been, we're still the problem solvers. It's just become more complex and difficult. And as much as we may long for the straight-forward and the easy, it's the tough challenges that make our days worthwhile and prove our worth.

Mary & Dick Greenberg Coldwell Banker - Fort Collins 702-A W. Drake Rd. Fort Collins, CO 80526 970-689-4663 www.maryanddick.com