It’s a gamble. I met a nice young couple this morning who are relocating to the area. We spoke Wednesday morning and we met Thursday morning. After asking whether they were meeting with any other Realtors, they said that they were meeting with another agent on Friday morning. Great – competition is a good thing. I explained my philosophy on working with Buyers and went over the Buyer-Broker which I expect all of my clients to sign (certainly not on the first or second meeting, but definitely at the time a mutually-beneficial relationship has been formed!). My explanation did not appear to be as well received or understood as it could have been.

They wanted to see as many houses as possible in a short period of time, and they felt that by meeting with several Realtors, they would see more homes. This is not an accurate conclusion. While the right house may “pop up” by virtue of looking at everything on the market that remotely fits your needs/wants, there is a better way to search for a house.

This is how I explained it – if you spend six hours with me today, and six hours with another Realtor tomorrow and another several hours with yet another Realtor the next day and then spend Sunday looking at Open Houses – there is no consistency, no coherence to the search process, no relationship formed. What I learned on Thursday will have to be re-learned by the next Realtor and so on … a good agent needs time to adapt; in order to adapt, one must be able to listen. One cannot listen unless given the chance.

After our morning and early afternoon together, we took a break, and he came back to the office for a follow-up. He said, “I thought we were shopping for a house, and not an agent.” The RE.net to the rescue!

Search for an agent instead of a house
Shopping for houses isn’t like shopping at Nordtrom’s

You absolutely should be searching for a Buyer’s Agent before you start seriously shopping for a home.

For an example as to why one should not just jump in the car and go with everybody who wants to, see this recent email exchange with an internet lead:

I neglected to ask previously – are you currently working with any other Realtors? Have you been pre-approved, if necessary, and finally – what is your timeframe for purchasing?

We are currently not working with a buying agent. We haven’t officially been pre-approved for financing yet, but I’m hoping to make that happen either by the end of this week or next week at the latest. That shouldn’t be a problem.

My mother (Betty) shows the house(at my request since I represent the Seller), follows up with the buyer via email … and then I get a call from another agent whom I respect and trust who says that he has shown this buyer lots of properties, and that he expects to write an offer in a couple of days, and how should we handle procuring cause?

Sometimes the gamble works, but anything that I can do to mitigate the risk helps.

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