"Oh, We've Got a Friend in the Business"

February 12th, 2008 Categories: One Minute Realtor, Sellers

So You’ve Got a Home to Sell in Annapolis (Edgewater, Crownsville, Severna Park, etc): Should You Hire a Real Estate Friend or Relative?

Ouch, this gets very tricky. We run into this situation frequently – just yesterday, in fact, when we met with a For Sale By Owner in Annapolis. The seller had the good sense to know, intuitively, that hiring a friend ”in the business” to sell his million dollar home could be like opening the proverbial can of worms.

Based on personal experience and dozens of stories we’ve heard from clients and other agents, he’s onto something. Hire a friend or relative and you run the risk they’ll let down their professional guard. Client-friends – in order to keep the peace and the relationship intact – may not speak up if promises and expectations are not being met. Resentment builds. Stuff happens.

Like Trump Says: It’s Not Personal, It’s Just Business

It’s understandable that anyone would want to hire a friend or relative in the real estate business. Understandable, yes. Advisable? Maybe not. Take a step back and consider a few things first.

Say your friend or relative is new to the business. Nothing wrong with that: we were all new at this once. However, are they sufficiently seasoned to handle the job? Selling a home in this market isn’t easy. It takes savvy, determination, and the right tools to get the job done. They might not be prepared for the responsibility, anymore than a typical 17-year old male is prepared to drive your new $100,000 Corvette.

How’s their attitude? The current market has been tough on a lot of agents. How is your candidate holding up? If they’re always barking about what a dog-eat-dog business this is, and woe-is-me, throwing them a bone probably isn’t going to help. Only go-get-’em optimists need apply.

And What if You Have More Than One Friend/Relative in the Business?

More than once we’ve been hired to sell a home for precisely that reason: the seller didn’t want to choose one agent friend over another – at the risk of insulting several others – and chose us instead.

The Bottom Line

If you’re considering hiring a friend or relative in the business, judge them on their professional merits. Resist the temptation to hire a friend or relative out of the goodness of your heart: this is your home we’re talking about, not a summer lawn job. It’s likely the biggest investment you have and you want a professional in charge.

If you really want to help a promising new agent, tell him that you’d like him to refer the sale of your home to a top-producing agent in his office – stipulating that your friend or relative be allowed to “shadow” the process and learn, up-close and personal, how it’s handled. A negotiable referral fee – say 15% to 20% – would be paid to your friend at the time of settlement.

That’s called win-win, something – incidentally – that’s central to the Keller Williams way of doing business.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 8:32 pm and is filed under One Minute Realtor, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.