#1 - Commenting on offers before presenting them to your clients
When I receive offers on my listings - even very low offers - my standard response is, "Thank you very much for your offer. I will present it to my clients and get back with you as soon as I can." Unfortunately many agents feel the need to interject their personal opinion on the matter before we ever start negotiating. For example, recently I made an offer on behalf of my buyer clients and it went something like this:
My client offered $275,000 on a home listed at $300,000 in hopes of meeting somewhere in the middle. This is pretty much standard practice, depending on various other factors, but for the most part this happens frequently. The listing agent called my cell and said, "Jeff, your client's offer is VERY low. I don't think we're going to be able to get this to work." I asked if he had presented the offer to his clients yet and he said, "Well, no. But I think they're going to be offended." He thinks. He doesn't know. He thinks! So in his mind, before even presenting the offer to his clients, he thinks we have no chance of making this work. The best part of this true story is that they accepted $275,000.
#2 - "Agent is owner"
If you don't know how I feel about agent-to-meet showings then you can catch up by reading this post. Yesterday I scheduled about 10 appointments for homes priced at or just under $300K and I gave the homeowners more than 24 hours notice. Under 99.999% of circumstances homes under $300K should never be agent-to-meet appointments. One listing tried to reschedule our showing by an hour because the agent had to meet us at the home to let us in. When you're looking at 10 homes in a 10 mile radius it's too much hassle to go back to view one home. I cancelled the showing. There is simply too much inventory to look at. The scary part about this story is that the home is owned by a licensed realtor. She should know better than to a) reschedule a showing with 24-hour notice, and b) require that she meet us at the home to let us in.
Happy Friday, indeed.
