Straddling the awkward line between friend or family and client

It is akward. I had a very good friend for years and years (we had lunch once a month and she had picked my brain every lunch for business advice). She wanted a particular property and told me to watch for it. She called me nights, weekends over this one that she was watching to come on the market. It hit the MLS 10 am on Monday and I called her, excited! She told her secretary (avoidance) to tell me she had it “covered”. WHAT?

I called her again and asked what does that mean?

She called back and explained she saw the sign go up so she stopped the listing agent at the house and told her she wanted it. Kicker: her husband told her to wait, not to do it, but to call me first. She replied “I want this house and I don’t care how I get it.” (yes she told me her husband said this and told me what her response to him was)

I was stunned. I gave free marketing advice to this friend for years to help her in business. When I told her this is how I pay my bills she replied “I just wanted the house and really didn’t care about you at that moment.”

It totally soured our friendship. Perhaps I should not have let it get in the way, but her callous disregard for me — and feeling used about it — really hurt.

Unfortunately, this in pretty common, and falls into the category of S—Happens!

Over the years I’ve provided advice for several friends, relatives, or neighbors on real estate questions believing they appreciated and respected me and would ask me to represent them when they were ready. Then “something” happened! A relative ended up listing with the random agent who knocked on his door (with client in car) a few days before our appointment to write up the listing. Another close friend that I had been showing property to for several weeks ended up buying a FSBO from a co-worker’s relative. Another listed her condo with the agent she met at open house when she stumbled in to check out the decorating.

I try to explain that I don’t get paid by the hour to offer my knowledge, and that I will advocate in their best interests at all times, but there are too many ways that people just lose their minds and forget how valuable your services really are to them.

We can’t dwell on these disappointments, so just set it aside and say “Next!”

We work in a trade where we provide a service to our community. You can definitely cross this line, and probably in fact can’t avoid it. It is inevitable. Some clients turn into friends, and some friends come to you for business, and become clients. You have to keep the friendship in front of the business. Make your decisions with that in mind, help them get what they want, and it will work out just fine. They’ll refer you to people you don’t already know.

We all have stories (like in this post, and the comments thus far) about friends who have abused our services, taken free advice and leveraged it to their advantage, and in essence put their business in front of the friendship. In those cases, you may see a change to the ‘friendship’. And who cares? True friends wouldn’t take advantage of you, and as long as you remain cognizant of the friendship first, those breakdowns are on their conscious, not yours.

And then you move on…

What a great topic! Of course this has happened to everyone who works as a real estate professional or in a similar capacity.

When my sister in-law and her new husband purchased their new house in an area that I service, and used another agent, I was quite upset. According to my wife, her sister, she did not want to use me because she and her new husband wanted to keep their personal information private. Never the less, I was very upset with her for a long time and I still retain some mixed feelings about her choice.

I have taken the philosophy that “it is what it is” but my parents and siblings still resent my wife’s sister for not using my services. In all honesty, I know that I would have provided my sister in-law and her husband with better representation than they received from their chosen agent. Truth be told, I still harbor a certain amount of resentment toward them.

Thank you for letting me vent! :~)

Thank you all for your candor! I agree, you do need a thick skin in this very competitive business to deal with all of the ups and downs. I think many people not in real estate don’t understand how long it takes, expensive and time consuming it is for us to develop a business and that we do need help from those closest to us to be successful in a timely manner if we want what I consider to be the best possible business, a referral business.
Perhaps we need to continually remind people as Brian Buffini suggests ” I’m never too busy for your business or your referrals”, so that they know we have some needs and expectations”? I do agree if you are passed over or slighted by a friend or stranger it is best to try to pull yourself together as quickly as possible and remind yourself that “It’s just business”.

I’ve read all of these comments, and Dan’s rings the most true.

As a first-time buyer, I did use my sister-in-law as my buyer’s agent, despite my better judgment. I knew a little bit about the business (my grandmother is also an agent, but lives quite far away), and I knew how agents are paid. I also knew my sister-in-law could certainly use the money.

At first, I asked for a referral. She refused to give the referral, and insisted she “help” us instead.

Please, if your friends or family ask for a referral, take the fee, and walk away. In fact, I believe if your friends or family ask you to represent them, you should give a referral, and walk away. She was not the right agent for me.

Dan, regarding point (3) above: I could not fire a relative. Not three months in as a buyer’s agent, with no accepted offers, despite following every word of advice she gave us. Not six months in. And not nine months in (when an offer was finally accepted on a short sale…which led to another lengthly adventure).

It was an awful, bitter experience, and we are doing our best not to cause or contribute to a rift in the family. While she’s a great agent, she was not a great agent to me, because we were family, and she was doing us a “favor”. In fact, in the end, it was the perception that she was doing us a favor (she received a full commission, kickbacks from at least two of her “preferred vendors”, did NOT deliver a full closing package, and, in fact, did not deliver anything to us at closing). We were certainly left feeling we would have been better off going with redfin, or another discount brokerage, and getting a small percentage back.

We’ll never buy through family or friends again. And personally, I doubt anyone should. All of the agents above mourning the loss of the “free advice” they gave…welcome to being a freelancer. Those who still have sour grapes over someone going through another agent for a transaction (especially a relative), think about it this way:
If they don’t use you, you are writing them out of your life for: about $5,000.
If they use you, and something goes wrong, they are stuck paying (and resenting you for): about $500,000.

Almost everyone in my close and extended family has a policy not to do business with family. The one relative who invited us to work with him on a business adventure (which turned out to defraud him) had no business training, no business experience (he is an academician in a field unrelated to business) and is a know-it-all who doesn’t ask questions or listen because he knows it all. Thank goodness my husband has such a good cr-p detector!

When I was in residential real estate, I received a call from a guy a knew from a couple of social groups, one who had bent my ear on some personal matters (TMI) and acted like I was his new best friend. He then sold his condo through another agent (who did not follow through on something that cost him a couple of thousand at closing) and then hired the same agent to help him and his fiancee purchase in home in a manufactured home park (which is really a land lease). He called me for advice on the transaction and I just referred him back to his agent saying I couldn’t interfere with another agent’s transaction.

There was a woman in my church who was selling a home and then buying one with her boyfriend (liberal church). Instead of using the services of one of the experienced agents in our church — and she knew who we were, she used the services of a woman who attended a different church of the same denomination (they met during a combined choir rehearsal for a joint event) who had just received her license. LSS — The timing was off; the new house was purchased before the old one was sold. In a fast-moving seller’s market, the old house lingered on the market for quite a while, thus 2 mortgages due for close to a year. Oh, yes, she said she picked the agent because they had so much in common — singing in the choir!

With buyers I wonder if they just don’t want their friends and family to know that much detail about their financial status. Perhaps it’s true for sellers as well.