Having a decent memory helps greatly in the real estate game. From a sales standpoint, it helps greatly to remember names and faces. From a customer service standpoint, it helps to be able to remember differences between the 37 homes you visited over the past three weeks as your buyer lurches closer to an eventual decision.
But sometimes a short memory is necessary. Like closers in baseball and defensive backs in football, a short memory is the key to long-term success. Spend too much time dwelling on the failures and your mindset never will get right for the successes ahead.
I’ve not been blessed with such a short memory, unfortunately.
About two months ago I received a call from my Westbrook Village website from a couple asking me to help find them a casita in the Village. We spoke on the phone twice more that week and met one Sunday afternoon to look at homes. No decision was reached as they needed to put her condo on the market before they could buy.
Two days later, I was asked to keep them updated on any changes in Westbrook and more specifically with two of the casitas we’d visited. We scheduled another showing tour for the coming Saturday.
Friday night I get a call canceling the appointment. They didn’t want to look at any more until they had her condo sold. Four days later, I was informed that I’d been fired in favor of someone “with more experience” in the area. Checking through sold listings today, I saw they wrote a contract the weekend after I was fired.
Who wrote the contract? Not someone who has “more expertise” but rather their listing agent, who likely offered some sort of rebate for using her on both sides of the deal.
Now, I don’t begrudge using the same agent for the purchase as for your sale especially if there’s a rebate involved. I routinely offer something similar to my clients. But I do have a significant issue with being lied to.
Real estate agents are accused of being little more than used car salesmen who’ll say anything to secure a deal, but it’s rarely if ever pointed out how often the public will lie to an agent (theirs or otherwise) rather than being up front any given situation.
In what may be a supreme act of chutzpah, I’ve asked for referrals from this couple – since they didn’t use anyone else who works in this area, my expertise likely was not the issue. So what have I got to lose? In truth, it seemed like a far better solution that calling them both miserable liars, deserved or not.
In any event, other buyers and sellers are waiting so the time’s come to try and put this memory behind me and move on to the next pitch. Whether that works is another story.
