skill

Don’t Balk. Learn ASAP.

samuelabbottiii, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Today we had a birthday party for my four-year-old daughter. My wife invited a few couples from the community as well as our immediate neighbors and everyone that had young kids brought them. The party was a hoot and we all had fun.

I, of course, am now ready to curl up in a ball with a book for an hour or so before I fall asleep.

Talking with one of the fathers and he asked me how work was going. This is what people do. They ask me how the market is, how work is going. I answer the question, on average, two or three times a day to different people.1

I answered like I would, telling him that the interest rates are higher than they’ve been in more than twenty years, which makes it difficult for people to want to buy. Being that many sellers are also buyers, there’s also a lack of inventory which is compounded with what is already a low-inventory market. So, things are going okay, but they could be better. What homes there are are selling quickly. There are more cash deals than what is typical, and most of the sellers that I’m working with are moving out of state for various reasons.

We somehow got on the topic of assumable mortgages. It was definitely something I brought up. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Having gotten licensed in 2017, there hasn’t been a big reason to know anything about assumable mortgages. Now, with interest rates being as high as they are relative to how low they were three years ago, I know it’s something I should learn more about to help buyer clients secure loans on the best terms possible.

But, I have yet to learn about them. That is, until after my conversation with this guy when I proceeded to look it up so I’d know what the hell I was talking about.

Don’t talk about real estate things that you don’t fully understand with people. That’s my lesson for today. We talked in and out and all around the notion of an assumable mortgage. I hadn’t grasped the concept fully. It was only partially hatched in my little 2017-licensed brain. No appraisal? Couldn’t be. Has to appraise. Turns out that’s not true. Bank doesn’t give a shit so long as you have the difference between the loan and the sale price in cash. What kind of loans are assumable? Are there certain kinds that frequently are or certain kinds that frequently aren’t?

I knew nothing, other than that the point was to acquire the lower rate. I didn’t know that one then has to come up with a down payment sufficient to cover the difference between the loan amount and the market value/asking price of the property. I didn’t know that government-insured loans are often assumable, that conventional loans rarely are.

I didn’t know. But he asked, and I admitted I didn’t know.2

What’s worse is that I brought it up. I initiated it. I looked uninformed, professionally, which makes it appear that I’m not fully able to represent my clients. That’s true to some degree. This is something I should know about, like I said.

I don’t want to get myself into situations where I don’t know things that I should know professionally. Not going to win me any points with the public. So, I learned, and I’ll learn more. I’ll begin to use this for my clients, when possible. I will ask my sellers about the nature of their loans and will research this more effectively in my pre-listing process.

  • If the thought comes that I should know something because it will make me more valuable professionally, I shouldn’t balk. Learn it asap.
  • Don’t unnecessarily put myself into positions where I don’t have the answers that relate to my profession.
  • When these things happen, autopsy the situation, see where I went wrong, correct course, and don’t make the same mistake twice.
  1. It pays to have a canned response to this. It’s not something I’ve mastered. I usually make the mistake of being transparent and telling them how the market actually is or how work is actually going. Maybe that’s me being authentic, or maybe I’m missing opportunities to be a clever real estate salesperson. ↩︎
  2. This is a sign of progress. The new-agent version of Sam would have tried to bullshit his way through it instead of just admitting that he didn’t know and exercising even the smallest display of humility. ↩︎
Don’t Balk. Learn ASAP.

High Stress, High Stakes

samuelabbottiii, , , Leave a comment

Dealing with difficult people during difficult times is unfortunately something that characterizes the role of the real estate professional. High stress, high stakes. And let’s be honest, sometimes the situations themselves don’t really seem that intense.

Looking at a $400k condo +/- negotiating an extension deadline for a financing contingency and a closing. Big fucking deal.

But in reality, the sellers I represent already got buyers to the closing before the buyer breached contract and bailed. Here we are, sold it again, made it to the eleventh hour, and the buyer agent is requesting a second extension of the financing deadline.

If that were all, it would be annoying, maybe frustrating. Add to these kinds of situations marital separations, pending foreclosure and auction, looming bankruptcy, or loss of job or loved one — suddenly, these apparently basic situations and negotiations are incredibly high stress, high stakes.

And it’s our job to show up. To stay even-keeled. To be the objective one that has their shit together and also knows what’s going on so we can manage the situation as best we can.

Takes practice. But we get better at it. We get better at recognizing what’s our ego and what’s actually in the best interest of the client. What needs to be said, what should be said, what doesn’t need to be said, and what shouldn’t be said. We learn to let ourselves have fun with the draft email but delete most of it and wait until the morning to revise it again if needed and actually send it.

This is one of the skills that makes us good at what we do. It’s where we can be of immense value or significant detriment to the people we serve.

High Stress, High Stakes