(Click Through for Video)

A comment on Charlottesville’s Bubble Blog the other day is the inspiration for this video.

There are houses out there, with people willing to sell them. take your time be patient, research, make and offer you know you can afford and do not be afraid to start well below asking. Also do not always listen to your realtor, no matter how long the have been in the business… We found even though we had a long time realtor with a great reputation, in the end our work and focus on what we wanted made the deals work. No knock on the realtors, but when making a purchase this big, it pays to educate yourself.

When it comes down to it, I consider myself very good at what I do, and I want my clients who hire me as their Buyer Broker or to help them market their homes in Charlottesville to trust me. But … I also see a big part of my job as educating my clients.

Ultimately, my clients have to choose whether to accept my guidance and advice. I’m not the one spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Update 26 May 2009; I will be transcribing these for the foreseeable future:

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Hey Jim Duncan, Nest Realty and RealCentralVA.com. I was reading Charlottesville’s Bubble Blog blog the other day and a recent successful buyer in the Charlottesville market said that they liked their Realtor and they trusted their Realtor, but their advice was not to trust everything the Realtor said. I couldn’t agree more. I expect my buyers and I want my buyers and sellers to trust everything I say, but I also expect them to do their own research and do their own due diligence. As much as I have the utmost confidence in the advice that I give, I also expect that my people are going to be Googling and researching and vetting everything that I say. When it comes down to it, my advice is valuable, but I’m not the one who is borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars and making a commitment right now buying a house.

So yes, I want my clients to trust me and I want my clients to listen to me, but I want my clients to push back when they don’t necessarily believe what I have to say. That makes me better personally as a Realtor at what I do because it forces me to defend my actions and my advice and back up what I say with facts.

Often times I will say to my clients: “Trust me, my gut says this is the right move,” or “My gut says this is a bad move.” But I also try to back it up with facts.

So when you’re doing your research for a Realtor in Charlottesville or anywhere, ask questions, trust them, and as Regan said, “Trust, but verify.”

Thanks and have a good day!