Sound Off: How do you keep a client’s spirits up when they keep missing out on houses?

Q: How do you keep a client’s spirits up when they keep missing out on houses?

A: While it’s never fun to lose out on a house, we always try to stress that there are often silver linings when this happens.

Hopefully, the experience will make clients better informed the next time around. Did they miss out because they were too slow seeing it or putting in an offer?

Next time, they will know to move quickly on a house that checks their boxes. Did they make an offer and the seller went with another with fewer contingencies?

That’s motivation to get financing locked down and do their diligence ahead of time on the next one. It’s always disappointing to miss out, but often those losses point buyers towards the house that really fits their needs and sometimes prompts them to re-evaluate what they really want.

People often say, thank goodness we didn’t get those other houses, because we love the home we did finally get.

Paul Kitchen, Compass, 415-652-7285, paul@teamhatvany.com.

A: Explaining the home buying process and what the current market conditions are to a client at my first meeting is very important. As we are still currently in a market that I would classify as a sellers market, I explain to the client what to expect when making an offer on a property, that it may very well be a multiple offer situation. How do we structure their offer to give them the best chance at getting the property? I explain the reasoning for each recommendation I gave to my buyer client(s).

I reach out to the listing agent to find out how many offers they are expecting on the property, when they will look at offers and if possible what the sellers expectations are. It is important to get a feel for what our competition will be for...