Sometimes buyers get cold feet.

It’s happening more than ever because of the speed at which they have to make decisions.

Recently I was at an inspection with one of my clients. The home needed updating & most of the conversation during the inspection was focused on what renovations would be done & how much it would cost. My client was pretty reserved, I could tell he was thinking hard. When it was over, he turned to me and said, “I think we still want to buy this house.”

This was not the reaction I had hoped for. Home buying right now is not easy. So you want your clients to be pumped about the home they worked so hard to get. Often in these situations, Realtors feel compelled to do damage control & to reassure the client that the house is a great buy. But I think this is the wrong approach. I think they should instead create a safe space for the client to walk away if they decide to.

There is an unfair caricature of home buyers that realtors joke about. It depicts them being super picky & wasting their agent’s time looking at tons of homes. This is almost never my experience. Usually, after about 8 showings, buyers start to apologize for not having found a home yet. “We must be your worst clients ever,” they’ll say. You wouldn’t believe how much I hear this.

Most buyers are very respectful of my time. So much so that they might buy the wrong house just because they don’t want to be difficult.

I turned to my client and said, “you know, it’s ok if you walk away. Yes, it’s a neighborhood that you love. But it’s also a $600k home that needs a lot of updating.”

They did end up walking away from that house and found a better home a few weeks later.

Was the seller upset with us? Yes.

Did they put the home back on market and make $15k more than we offered? Yes.

Did we find a home that was much more updated that saved the buyers a huge amount of money out of pocket? Yes.

Happy ending. Nuff said.