Annapolis Area Homebuyers: Is Your Real Estate Agent Helping You Find the Shiny Pennies?
April 17th, 2008 Categories: Buyers, The Realtor's Life
We Try Not to Toot Our Own Horn Too Much - Nobody Likes a Braggart. But We Love It When Our Clients Do It For Us, When They Notice and Say Thanks for The Things We Do. Here’s One Such Story.
When we work with an Annapolis area homebuyer, the first step of the process is a meeting at our office that we call the “buyer consultation.”
It’s our opportunity to introduce ourselves, talk about how we work, and to listen. Listening is a big part of this business. My dad used to say that God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth so we’d listen twice as much as we talk, and that’s a good thing for a Realtor to remember.
One of the things we ask our buyers is to describe, in detail, their dream home - number of bedrooms, bathrooms and all the other obvious stuff. But also the stuff of their dreams. White picket fence? Window seats? Arched doorways? If it means something to you, we want to know. Makes it easier to find you the perfect home.
If a buyer is urgent - and needs to find a home in short order - there’s a good chance they won’t have enough time to preview all the possibilities themselves. Or, the
client may have children, in which case the novelty of schlepping the gang around from house to house wears off pretty quickly for all concerned.
A good buyer’s agent - and we have 3 great ones on The Moss Haedrich Team - will preview homes for a client, screen them, compare them to a client’s “dream list” and take copious notes in the process. It’s very time consuming to do so, but, hey - this is why they pay us the medium bucks. It’s just part of the value we bring to our clients.
One of our buyer agents, Kathy Foy, has a great saying for this. She calls it searching for the “shiny pennies” - homes that show well, meet her client’s needs, and are priced competitively. Many homes don’t make the cut. The ones that do, she shows her clients.
One of whom took her aside last week and expressed his heartfelt gratitude for doing precisely that. He thanked her for previewing a lot of potential homes so he - a very busy gentleman - didn’t have to. That’s all - a heartfelt thanks. But it meant the world to her.
