The consumer mindset that exposes practitioner liability in today’s market.
When agents represent a seller or buyer, our mission is to get them excited about their transactions and have them to trust us as fiduciaries. Our sellers should get the right price in the right time frame, and our buyers should find the right house and feel totally confident when they close.
There’s only one problem: There are a ton of agents who just can’t achieve this goal. It’s not that they don’t care or are not good practitioners—it’s that consumer sentiment is unstable. Consumer confidence falls when there’s instability in the market, which leads to increased fears and uncertainties. In real estate, the typical response to fear is to either negotiate the deal or back out of it altogether.
We cannot make the fatal flaw of assuming a deal will go through just because we’re friends with the agent on the other side. Right now, it’s better to assume the client will stumble across something that will shake their confidence in the deal. That will force us to stay on top of our terms with respect to our timelines, contingencies, responses, documentation, and everything else.
“We need to be ready for the unexpected and stop placing blind trust in the other party.”
Just recently, we had a buyer at the closing table who was in an extreme rush to finish up so they could move. The next day, they decided they hadn’t cleared the HOA resale package requirement, which stated that they couldn’t park their classic car in the driveway for more than four hours while working on it. For the buyer, that was a deal-breaker, so they backed out. Meanwhile, the seller quickly moved out of the home to help the buyer. They even called in a few Hail Marys to get repairs done in three days, only for things to fall apart at the last minute.
Uncertainty is the biggest liability in this market, so we need to be ready for the unexpected by being extra careful during transactions and not placing blind trust in the other party. We hope this reminder will help spare you the pain of missing one little contingency and watching a whole deal blow up in your face.
If you have any questions about today’s topic or anything else to do with navigating our changing market, give us a call or send us an email. We’d love to confer with you.
