Throughout my real estate career, I've enjoyed working with buyers. Maybe it's because I started off in a strong buyers market, and the habits and skills I developed were geared to finding buyer prospects and then finding their dream homes.
I gained a reputation for being a great negotiator and for being able, when necessary, to put together complicated deals and make them work. And as a strategy, the buyer thing worked very well for me, at least until the late 1990s.
That was when the market went from slow to normal to hot to red hot to white hot! All of a sudden, being a great buyer broker looked like it could become the path to starvation.
To help balance things out, the listings I got were much easier to sell, so I didn't have to resort to eating cat food. But this white hot market was just not a lot of fun when I was on the buyer's side - and sometimes being the listing agent presented interesting challenges.
The strong listing agents (the ones who suffered with whiny sellers when nothing was selling) suddenly ruled! Some of them actually got pretty cocky, especially when one of their listings drew 30 or 40 offers and sold waaay above asking.
I had a really hard time telling my buyer clients what they had to do to win a bidding war. You know - pay way over asking, have the home inspection done before making an offer, agree to take the house in "as is" condition, and give the sellers a free rent-back for a couple of months while they found a new home.
To my way of thinking, this is not the description of a "good" market.
If the house went way over asking, the sellers got ticked off thinking the price was too low. They hated their agent!
The 39 buyers who lost out went into mourning. They hated their agent!
The lucky winners of the bidding was often woke up three days later screaming, "WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?" And, of course, they blamed their agent for getting them into this dreadful situation!
So, once again, here in the Washington area, things are back to normal. I probably have more than my share of buyers who are ready, willing and able, and listing agents are being very respectful, although that could just be that I'm so old.
And now that the tables have turned, I know that I cannot afford to get cocky, because they could turn again at any moment!
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