The number one, best real estate broker in Maine did not get the title without providing top level customer service.
How to help buyers and seller’s of real estate has many facets. And dealing with real estate listings and property sales involves people and their high speed lifestyles. Patience can run low when the clock ticking loudly makes for a tight entry real estate opportunity in the property shuffle for the owner, for the purchaser.
We try to prepare both purchasers and property owners for what is ahead of them. Spelling out the roles each have and what both segments of the real estate audience take on to get to a property closing as easily as possible. We want everyone to get an ice cream!
No one enjoys wasting their time or money and the frustration that any delays take away from a positive experience property transfer process. That every real estate listing, all the property sales should end with but that starts with knowing it does not just happen without effort and constant guidance to navigate the process.
Everyone involved can help or hurt the real estate sale knowingly or without realizing it.
And often it is just a situation of timing for the buyer, bank, seller, all the layers of players in the real estate sale working to be on the same schedule. Or to hammer out one along the way to consider delays you see coming and all that can creep up in a property sale.
The best way to see superior customer service in action is to go on a vacation.
The folks who rise to the occasion to go above and beyond stand out. The best at providing the real estate customer service understand what it is like to be in the shoes of the buyer, seller, both sides of the transaction.
And listening up front can save much heartache later as the real estate sale unfolds, sometimes unravels. From experience, asking questions, listening to answers can increase the odds of an easy real estate property sale transfer.
Right up front seeing the red flags that will hurt the chances of an actual closing need to be talked about in detail. It is not going to hurt the feelings of a buyer or a seller if their expectations are not realistic if explained logically from the point of first contract with either party.
How does this real estate movie end… sappy short and sweet and lovey dovey or one big property sale nightmare that haunts the players for life. Had all the clouds in your coffee makings for deep trouble out of the gate?
Like a doctor or lawyer, sometimes as a real estate agent, broker, REALTOR you can not help the buyer or seller.
Because what they hope to achieve is not possible. We love a challenge but despite our best efforts, some real estate listings are not going to convert to property sales.
When there is resistance from an anxious buyer or seller in a real estate transactions, it can appear as nit picking to point out what is obvious to the professional who eats, breathes, thinks real estate 24/7/365. But in the long run, time, money and emotion are saved if on going discussions are had all the way along the pathway of the listing to the real estate property closing.
Anger because the real estate agent or broker is not telling the buyer or seller what they want to hear happens. Often I see the escalation as sheer frustrations because of many factors we do control, the even more from the list we do not. But from experience, if you can tell a buyer or seller upfront, along the way that this could happen, that this might occur it takes away the element of surprise.
No one likes unexpected delays, surprises and especially when it affects their families, hits them in their bank account.
Are some real estate buyers or sellers easier to deal with than others? You bet. Do we as real estate professionals have to be aware of our own moods and attack problems not people? Absolutely.
I love the job of real estate because it is not one repetitious task but tied to the A to Z of listing a property, helping arrive at the pricing for a realistic value expectation. To market the features and the local area to brand new out of town or state or country buyers. And to help assist the real estate buyer and seller with the the last minute details that can make or break the sit down for the formal paperwork signing at the real estate closing.
The properties all have a story to share, the process of the real estate sale is different in many ways on every transfer.
Like delicate surgery, what to do when and if this happens is all part of the study of the sale as it is plugged into life support. But there are listings that are so over priced that it makes a sale impossible and buyers who may want to purchase that are in no position to in the final analysis.
Being candid, wanting a sale to happen but knowing why it can or will not makes us part of the solution process or the bearer of bad news. Have had lots of purchasers and property owners that are not ready to buy or sell the day of contact. But with time, lots of effort to overcome some real estate sale obstacles, they can have their purchase and sale with some adjustments.
Some of those tweaks are major and time sensitive, and others are standard and pretty luke warm easy to solve.
Timing times three to buy or sell has replaced the three “L”s of location being the end important all these days in real estate sales. We have resources for real estate buyers and sellers.
What causes frustration on a real estate buyer’s part? Having to wait for information, not getting a call back to let them know what is the delay in a sale. Folks don’t like to be left in the dark and communication these days is so easy with real estate texting, mobile phones, and round the clock options for gaining information on any subject.
Real estate is not nine to five any longer and banker’s hours won’t work with busy buyers and sellers of property listings.
We work when other people don’t because they have lives and we let them lead them.
Buyers of property in Maine don’t want to get bits and pieces of information and should not have to dig that hard, wait that long for details.
The worst three words a real estate buyer can get pretty darn sick of hearing is “I don’t know” to important questions that the agent or buyer should have gathered the answers to at the time of closing. The answers to those questions makes or breaks what property to consider and the Maine expression is “it’s hard telling without knowing”.
Real estate sellers have their own set of pet peeves.
Don’t set up a showing and forget to make it. Explaining to a property owner that other agents set up a showing that gets dropped but without letting the listing agent in on the change of plans happens. But we monitor and let the seller know as soon as we do if the showing is not going to take place and why. Rescheduling is worked around as best as all the parties involved allow.
Don’t shoot us, we are just the real estate piano player, the match maker of the property listings needing to be bought or sold.
A frustrated anxious real estate listing owner on his third agent or broker also is fed up with the delay in a sale. The wanting to have folks touring their property daily for a quick sale is not as realistic in a small rural northern Maine market like I deal in.
Folks do as much online as possible and that is where video for real estate takes away much of the guess work and helps shift through those buyers. Who are touring the places for sale daily, just without the need to have to take their shoes off to protect the rugs from tracking through whatever is outside the property listing.
Instead of one showing at a time, multiple properties listed for sale in Maine can be assessed at the same time. The buyer gets to tour, re-trace their steps through a property listing before they actually even set foot in the property or physically arrive to the town where the real estate for sale is located. That is efficiency and having more buyers with a great marketing reach beyond the local area to cause a real estate property sale to happen quicker.
Sensitivity to buyers who have traveled far and wide to do the expensive trip to view properties in person and for sellers who feel their privacy is invade every time a showing happens helps the process.
Everyone likes to hear others understand how their feel, it validates those mixed emotions that are part of the real estate process of buy and sell.
Letting go of a property you built with your own two hands or that you owned for a long time, grew up in is hard to say good bye to and get on with a person’s life. Along with the move to a whole new areas where a buyer loses their comfort zone. All their bearings of what was normal, familiar and comfortable.
All of it comes under the empathy umbrella heading and added to complexity of financing, the logistics of timing to move out but not until all the contingencies of a real estate sale are worked out makes our job a challenge and highly real estate career rewarding.