In the Eye of the Buyer
Let me paint you a quick picture.
Last fall I was standing in my listing’s open house. A couple crashed through the door, water-logged and frustrated. I settled into my regular routine of greetings and invitations to tour the home. After touring, they arrived back to my location for a peppering of terrible jokes and put on their shoes.
“Do you have any questions?”
“No, but I will tell you, it was pleasant to be in here.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is our sixth open house. Either the host pressures you to sign in, or they follow you everywhere. We even had one person say that because our agent wasn’t with us, we must have a terrible agent and we should use them instead.”
“POACHERS,” I thought.
“It’s nice to be able to just look at a house, so thank you for that.”
That was in November.
In this market, which is admittedly one of the most competitive markets in the nation, there is not a lot listed between November and January for reasons like daylight, weather, and holiday feasting. Which means all the buyers who couldn’t find a place to hang their hat in the fall are now possibly in desperation mode and will jump at the first decent house in their price range.
Without details, last weekend I wrote on a house that wasn’t anything spectacular. You could hear the sounds of a busy road from the backyard and the rooms were small. The house received 35 offers over a period of days.
In my market, in the eye of the buyer, I have identified the following.
They are facing:
Aggressive and desperate competition (Another 34 people who didn’t get that house will be offering on the next one)
High stress and pressure sales tactics from bottom feeder agents
Low inventory
Emotional buying
Major compromising on their dream home wish list
Reckless offering – and huge a possibility of buyer’s remorse
And here you are, expected to guide the buyer through a mountain of issues like this.
Closing a transaction is only half of the job, the other half is to manage your client’s experience. If you intend to be a 100% referred agent (like me and many others), your next referral lives in the experience your client is having today. Do a good job by them by considering the high/lows they are going through.
Exercise:
Identify the landscape – bullet point what is happening in your market right now from the perspective of your buyer.
Identify the emotional experience they are having. (As I’ve said a million times, most decisions are made from the heart.)
Brainstorm ideas of small things you can do to alter the experience your client is having. Get a head of it. How can you manage expectations or prepare them before they see a house? Do you have time to tour them instead of sending them to opens? Etc.
We are all in different markets. I’d love to hear what’s happening in yours and how you’ve adapted to better your work for your client. Leave a comment below.
Until then, chin up, keep your feet moving … and burn the white flag.
sz
Copyright 2020 - Shelley Zavitz Realty