You always hurt the one you love

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When and if you ever choose to buy a home in the Santa Fe area, please consider treating yourself kindly and fairly and do the right thing for your family. Too many times a real estate transaction gets sideways because of poor communication or the lack of contact with customers. If you are interviewing buyer brokers to potentially work with, ask about the methods and timeliness of their communication habits. If you have a home listed for sale as a Realtor and you tell me you have not communicated with the owners of the home in more than a week’s time, I am concerned for your ability to do a great job for them.

Selling the home is the paramount task for a listing broker, but until it sells, is there not some minimum level of communication that should be reached? Would you put yourself in their position and think you would be perfectly happy without any communication for any period of time? How long would you be willing to wait between updates and reports of any interest or activity? A week seems to be about the longest tolerable time, to me. And what is that seller to the broker anyway? Are they not one of the most important business contacts they have while the listing is active? Realtors fight and claw to get listings, then amazingly drop the ball and stop the communication (why?) with their seller because they have no real news.

Being a seller of a home listed for sale is tough enough, with strangers walking through your bedroom and opening cabinet doors everywhere. No privacy and no taking a break from housecleaning and making it shine for a prospect. But if you are a seller and you know there have been showings of your home, or maybe there have not been many at all, should you expect an update or report from your chosen Realtor as to what they think is going on. Maybe as a minimum, the listing broker should share the feedback from the showings where feedback was provided. That can be invaluable and can lead to a serious consideration of the pricing and/or the condition of the home. When prospects continually say that they could not see the value of a home as it’s currently priced, that might mean its time to think about the price.

If I may be so bold as to speculate that your seller is someone you “love” — they are paying you a commission when their home sells — it seems they would be the last person you would want to hurt or treat badly. And yet it happens. And Realtors can hurt their buyers too, sometimes. A buyer who has chosen a Realtor to work with for assistance in purchasing a home should expect professional help and expertise. They should expect communication as befits the buyer’s agenda and timeline. Some buyer customers are going to buy in a couple of years. They likely do not expect weekly updates on our market conditions. How about the buyer that thinks they may be ready to purchase in the next 3 or 4 months? Seems like frequent communication would be in order. Don’t hurt the one you love; don’t hurt anyone, for that matter. But if you must choose because your time or energy is limited today, stay in touch with the ones you love. Days may feel long, but life can be unexpectedly short sometimes. Treat each day with respect, gratitude and appreciation.

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The writer is a 68 year-old young man engaged as an active REALTOR (associate broker) with Keller Williams, in real estate sales and management in the Santa Fe NM market area. My career has been in and around the real estate industry for more than 35 years, ranging from mortgage lending (interim, commercial, residential); residential property management and leasing; shopping center development and leasing; real estate sales; sales training; title insurance as an executive and an escrow officer; various management positions; consulting and other related activities. That plus a bunch of banking experience including our family-owned Bank of Santa Fe in the 1980s. Where has the time gone?
My background means you have my working knowledge of the entire transaction process at your disposal. That comes with honesty and no bullshit.