More often than not, the best real estate agents manage their transactions so well that the clients never realize the drama and trauma happening behind the curtain. It is the very rare deal that is absent of that excitement, most have some sort of issues to work out. Occasionally we make it look so smooth that clients interpret that to mean it is easy money.
I was contacted by clients from several years back. My eyes twitch as soon as I recall the transaction. High, high, high maintenance clients and issue ridden transaction. This was a transaction that went from purchasing a relatively cheap house to plunging into a short sale transaction. As soon as the lienholder started getting aggressive about negotiations and once the buyers reached their emphatically stated "bottom line", I was informed that the next concession would come from our firm's brokerage fee. Since we were already 40,000 hours (a slight exaggeration, but not much) into this deal, we made the concession and while I've gotten over it, I've never "for"gotten it and learned a hard lesson about respecting the value we bring to the transaction.
Anyway, these people remembered what a great job we'd done and were getting ready to sell or rent but probably rent. Groan. A polite upbringing isn't always an easy thing to live with. I went to see them and the house. A million words were exchanged, five words were mine. Yep, it was all coming back to me. These folks were talkers not listeners. Not only did they talk a lot but they talked over each other. Very long story short about this visit, they decided that since they had a number of other stressful situations going on and had a ready, willing and able prospect for a long term lease that they should rent it while they sorted out the rest of their lives. As I was preparing to take my aching head back to the office, one of them tells me they've taken two of the three real estate classes and had passed the class tests so far. He thought it looked like a pretty easy way to make a living. So far though, he'd observed that it was an expensive way to make a living.
Ya think? Just wait until someone asks you to discount your fee! (I did feel like saying thank you for the valuable lesson as we have not discounted since, but I didn't).
Real estate can be a fabulous way to make a living but it isn't for dabblers and it isn't for non-listeners. So far, this individual has only seen how expensive and intense the schooling is. Like the line from the Harry Potter movie as he steps into the magic bus, "hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride".
Kharma is an awesome thing. I know these people have no clue how hard our firm worked on their transaction to get them a deal of a lifetime and I really know they don't recall throwing us under the bus to cut the price just a little more.
Their strategy is to handle their own real estate investment transactions which if you've been paying attention in recent Continuing Ed classes is probably going to go the way of the Dodo bird.
No, this is not a rant post. It doesn't have to be. I have a friend in Kharma and a great song in my heart from Ricky Jones.
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