REALTOR® Magazine Online Edition Daily Real Estate News May 8, 2008
Buyers who think time is on their side can quickly wear out their welcome with real estate practitioners. If you're dealing with such a client, what can you do to get them to turn serious about their goal of buying a new home?
Have a talk with them. Terry Donahue, with Prudential Absolute, REALTORS®, in the greater Milwaukee area, says "if you're a good agent, you should be able to help people figure out what they're looking for, narrow it down, and not show them everything in the world. If they just keep looking and looking, you sit them down and say, 'Are you serious about buying a home or do you just want to look at houses?' You've got to figure out if they're real, or if they'll just keep finding reasons not to buy."
Make sure they were recently prequalified. Getting prequalified is a standard step when house hunting, but if there's too big of a time lag between when the client is prequalified and an offer is made, significant financial details may have changed. The tighter the time frame of prequalifying, making an offer, and closing on a house, the better the chances that the deal will stick.
Same goes for sellers. Set the price competitively, and encourage them to stick with it. "If you want it to sell quickly, then you want it priced at X," says Laurie Schubert, an agent with First Realty GMAC in Brookfield, Wis. "If they say that they want the highest price, and they don't care how long it takes, you rethink it. I have turned down overpriced listings, absolutely."
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Joanne Cleaver (05/03/08)
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