After fourteen years of writing stories three times per week (it was actually four times from 2007 to 2013…), I always wonder if I’ll eventually run out of things to write about.

But then as I’m wondering, I’ll have one, two, or ten experiences that are “blog-worthy,” and that wonder goes from concern to impossibility.

This business is so full of stories, I often wonder if I have time for them all.

Case in point: sometimes I have stories that aren’t really “worth” their own blog post.  Sometimes there are experiences, instances, or interactions that bear mentioning, but don’t necessitate 2,650 words.

Today, I’ll regale you with some quick hits across a variety of different topics.

Sound good?

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Can you bully your own listing?

This is a question that came up last week in my office as a listing agent had received a cold call from a buyer who was interested in the property.  About 99% of the time (and that figure could be low…) people calling the listing agent directly are completely out of touch with the market.  They’re asking about commission, they’re asking about the benefits of using the listing agent, they want a deal, and this is all before they’ve even seen the house!

In this case, the caller was serious.  And the price he wanted to offer for the house was right around the pre-determined bully offer threshold, so my colleague asked me, “What do I do?”

I told him that if he wanted to make some extra money, then go for it.  But if he gave the slightest shit about ethics, his reputation, how agents view him in the industry, and his business medium and long-term, then to pass this “lead” off to another agent and focus on the listing.

I have never submitted an offer on my own listing for a buyer, in competition.  I never would.

But the idea of submitting a bully offer on your own listing?  It’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

Agents will do this from now until the end of time, but it’s so short-sighted.  Double-ending a transaction is bad enough, what with the idea that you can fairly represent both buyer and seller.  But to bully your own listing?  It’s about as bad a move as you can make in this business.

It reminded me of a time earlier in the spring when a colleague of mine from another brokerage was irate because her clients lost out on a house which sold on a Sunday morning via bully offer.

I dug through my emails and found it!

Look:

The fact that this listing agent emailed all the cooperating agents at 10:51am to let them know of an existing offer with an 11:30am irrevocable is really bad.

But the fact that this was their own offer made it one of the worst moves I saw this year.

They bullied their own listing.  They did this on a Sunday morning, and they did it with 39 minutes’ notice.

That sucks.

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Incommunicado…

Here’s one I don’t think I’ve seen before.

I received two offers on a listing on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning, I called both agents and said, “I have two offers in hand, and while I appreciate that your buyer was making this offer under the assumption that he or she was not in competition, that’s where we are now.  The fairest thing to do is offer each of you one chance to resubmit with your best and final, and we’ll make a decision tonight at 7:00pm.”

Fair, right?

Both agents agreed.  Easy-peasey.

I made those calls at about 12:30pm.  How do I know this?  Because of what happened next.

The first agent re-submitted his offer around 4:00pm.  I acknowledged receipt and said I would get back to him.

The second agent didn’t resubmit at 4:00pm.  Or 5:00pm.  Or 6:00pm.

I considered that maybe he figured he was supposed to resubmit at 7:00pm, so I called him.

No answer.

I left a voicemail and said that I had already received the other agent’s improved offer and that I was going to speak to my client at 7:00pm.

Then I texted him.

At 7:00pm, I called him again.

No answer.

At 8:30pm, I called him, texted him, and emailed him.

Zero communication whatsoever.

At 8:45pm, we accepted the other agent’s offer.  He had included a 9:00pm irrevocable time, which I think was quite fair given we said we would review offers at 7:00pm.

I was on the couch watching Sunday Night Football at about 10:15pm when my phone rang and it was the other agent.

“David, my friend, what’s going on man?”

He was so relaxed and aloof.  I knew exactly where this was going.

“I’m just about to call my client and get something to you…” he said, before I cut him off, mid-sentence, and said, “We accepted the other offer about ninety minutes ago.”

Silence.

Then more silence.

“You what?” he asked, partially as a question, and partially as an accusation.

“It’s 10:15pm,” I explained.  “We spoke earlier today and…” but that’s when he cut me off and said, “Buddy, I’m going to get you a HUGE number!  You just gotta wait!  I was out with a high-profile client all day, man.  We were busy!”

I told him that the deal was done, the offer was accepted, and that he was way too late.

He threw around some disappointed exasperations, made some more insinuations of wrong-doing, and then I decided to use technology to my advantage.

I sent him a screen-shot of my call log, showing our 12:29pm phone call.

“Did you get the image I just sent you?” I asked him.

He said to hold on a moment, checked, and then said, “What is the meaning of this?”

“You and I spoke at 12:29pm,” I told him.  “I told you to resubmit your offer and I would review at 7:00pm with the seller.  It’s not 10:15pm.  I have not heard a peep from you in almost ten hours!”

He explained, again, that he was with a high-profile client.

I then sent him another screen-shot of my call log showing my attempted calls to him around 6pm, 7pm, and 8pm.

“Did you get the other image I just sent you?” I asked him.

“Doesn’t matter man, doesn’t matter,” he told me.  “I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it,” I told him.  “Good luck with the high-profile client.”

Sign of the times we live in: it’s always somebody else‘s fault…

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Further clarification…

When you market a house as being “situated on a quiet, family-friendly street with no traffic,” what happens when, all of a sudden, the street is jammed with cars?

Imagine you’re a would-be buyer and you can’t even get a parking spot on the street?

There are 40-50 cars parked around the house you’re going to see, and the road is a traffic jam.

How do you make sense of this?  Or do you even try?

Here’s an explanation:

What do you think, was this necessary?

Could we not have figured out on our own that somebody was having a social gathering of some sort?

Or was this value-add?

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It’s called “leverage”

I received an offer on a listing last week that had been sitting on the market for some time.

Let’s say it was listed at $869,900.  And the offer was $820,000.

What is the property actually “worth?”  I suppose that depends on how you assess value.

Based on comparable sales, price per square foot, or another metric that you prefer, you could probably fashion an argument that the property is worth $820,000.  After all, you can make numbers say anything you want, right?

I planned to sign this offer back at $869,900, just because I could.  The seller didn’t need to sell.  This wasn’t somebody who had bought a house and needed to sell the “backup” condo in order to close on the house purchase.  Not only that, I had previously sold one of his listings for the full list price after it sat on the market for almost three months, so suffice it to say, I had the competitive juices flowing.

The agent balked at my suggestion that I would sign the offer back at the list price.

“Do that,” she said, “And this deal goes nowhere.”

She began to cite previous sales and make a somewhat compelling argument on price, but it wasn’t going to phase me.  Every agent would give you a different definition of the term “negotiating,” but that’s not what this was.

When agents say, “Do this, and we’ll walk,” it’s ego.  It’s emotion.  You should never “walk” from a live deal.  Sign the offer back at the same price if you have to, but you don’t “walk.”

In any event, we agreed to disagree, and I planned to call my client.

Lightning doesn’t often strike twice in the same place, but as real estate metaphors go, it can sometimes happen.  Literally, an hour after I received this offer for $820,000, I received another offer on the property, this one for $822,500.  Both offers were conditional, both with meager deposits, both with 60-day closings.

I told the agent that just submitted the second offer, “We already have an offer in hand,” and explained that now that there were two offers, he should speak to his client about their price, terms, and conditions.

A couple of hours later, I called the first agent back and told her about the second offer.

She already knew, of course.  I had registered the offer in BrokerBay and that was emailed out to all the agents who had shown the property, including herself.

Her attitude immediately changed.  She was so nice, cordial, and pleasant.

She made no mention of her “valuation” of the condo at $820,000, or the comparable sales, or the price per square foot.

Instead, she told me, “I’m going to bring you an offer that’s really going to please your client!”

And she did!

An offer of $869,900, unconditional, with a higher deposit.

It’s called “leverage.”

It’s a simple concept, and in this case, it wasn’t me who applied the leverage, but rather the other agent who recognized the leverage and acquiesced.  Had she not done so, of course I would have applied the leverage.  But I didn’t need to.  This agent knew it was there, knew it was implied, and acted accordingly.

Had the second offer not materialized, and we signed the offer back at $869,900, would they have accepted?  Probably not.  But in the end, they purchased the condo for $869,900 and felt relief and good fortune on account of the competition.

Leverage is a game-changer in this market, and the presence or absence has a massive impact on price.

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Second chance is the new first chance…

I had yet another listing that produced two offers, and as is often the case, I told both buyer agents, “The fairest way to do this is simply a one-shot deal; put your absolute best offer on paper and we’ll look at them tonight at 6:00pm.”

One of the agents asked me, “Is there going to be a second round of bidding?”

I didn’t quite understand.  It’s like remarking, “Sure is sunny outside,” only to have the person next to you reply, “Do you think the sun will come out?”

I told her, yet again, that she should put her absolute best and final offer on paper, since I was going to look at the two offers once at 6:00pm and my client would accept the best offer.

She asked me if I could “lead her in the right direction on price” so I told her that, given there are two offers, she would need to be “well above the list price.”

At 5:30pm, she sent me her “best and final,” which was $30,000 below list.  I asked her, “Is this your best offer?” to which she said, “Yes.”

Obviously, we went with the other offer, which was higher.

We signed that offer, I sent a completed copy to that buyer agent, and then I called the other agent with the offer $30K below list to tell her she had lost.

“Okay, let me talk to my client,” she said.

“About what,” I asked.

“I know he’ll come up in price, just give me a few minutes,” she said.

I explained the difference between past, present, and future tense, and that “We accepted the other offer” is in past tense, as in it was already done.

She said, “Okay, but I get another chance though, right?”

There was no language barrier here.  It was just a learned ignorance.

“I directed you to put your best offer on paper,” I told her.  “I also explained that you should be well above the list price,” I added.

“Yeah, but we assumed we would get another chance,” she told me.  “Agents always give another chance.”

I knew I wasn’t going to get through to her, but I kept trying.  “You asked me if there’s ‘another round of bidding’ after the final offers are submitted, and I told you there wasn’t.  You came in low, your offer made no sense.  We’ve already accepted the other offer and sent it to the buyer.  This is not only done and over, but it was done and over ten minutes ago.”

Amazingly, she kept groveling.

She accused me of playing unfairly, insinuated that I was in cahoots with the other buyer agents, and all kinds of nonsense that just stank.

You might think that she didn’t know what she was doing, or that she was inexperienced, but I assure you, she wasn’t.  She simply decided that she would control the process, even though she lacked that ability.  She assumed that she could dip her toe in the pool and then jump in with a cannonball if it was needed, but she ignored the other parties already slipping into the water.

I’m used to my children not taking or understanding instruction, or simply hearing and subsequently ignoring, but it’s frustrating on another level when it’s a grown-ass adult.

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That’s it for me, folks!

Are you ready for Monday’s blog?

Any ideas what it could be?

Well, all the talk last Friday, through the weekend, and into the start of the week was about a certain public broadcasting corporation’s expose on the trials and tribulations of a certain for-sale-by-owner who cried foul when they couldn’t sell their over-priced house.  Maybe that would be a good topic to discuss? 🙂

Have a great weekend, everybody!