Today we look at how to evaluate how your realtor works for you, and if maybe you should look for a new one.
Featuring:
Bob Nelson, Eugene real estate investment broker
Marcia Edwards, Eugene residential real estate broker
Marcia Edwards: You know, they say that you attract more honey with bees. Is that how they say it, Bob?
Bob Nelson: Yes. Yeah, whatever.
Marcia Edwards: Bees with honey? Anyway, the point is that what we’re looking at is how to approach, well, a challenged market, and what’s going on is there’s a lot of walls coming up, defensive concerns that are not real. They’re happening in the industry and with the consumers. They’re preventing their own success.
Bob Nelson: That can happen so easily. When you’re negotiating, you’re negotiating for your best interest, and if you’re a broker, you’re negotiating for the best interest of your client. At what point could you kill a perfectly acceptable transaction by being overly, I’m going to say protective for lack of a better term? You overreach. You over ask. You do something that is not reasonable, but you say, “I’m going to do it anyway because I’m going to try to win this one for my client,” and you shoot yourself on the foot, and the race is off.
Marcia Edwards: It’s the ultimatums. It’s the black and whites. It’s the, why can’t we get along, is out the window. You’ve really got to continually, as a advocate for your client, think of the perspective of those other people in the other side of the transaction. What is their win? It’s not necessarily as directly like price, for example. It could be terms. It could be timing. There could be some other hop-ins, but if you don’t stay engaged in a dialogue that’s open that says there must be a way, you will lose a transaction that you should not have.
Bob Nelson: Exactly. That’s so easily done. Once you see that you’re doing it, can you backtrack quick enough to not offend the other person to a degree where they perceive, “I wouldn’t do business with you if you were the last person on the face of the earth”?
Marcia Edwards: You’ve got to look at how your realtor navigates circumstances. Even the interview with you, if they’re conceding easily, maybe they’re not negotiators. If they’re not giving you specifics with research-based opinions of value, then maybe they’re not the person that’s going to have your back in regards to your resale. Really understand who you’re dealing with because they’re going to be put up against some challenges in the process.
Bob Nelson: Exactly, and the challenges can be fairly extreme and fairly costly, but at the same time, we all started. We all started at zero as far as years of experience and so forth, and I’m not saying that a person with no experience is a bad person, but you do have to recognize that if you are being led into battle by somebody who’s never held the sword, so to speak, you are in a weakened position. You’re going to have probably do much of your own “negotiation.” Hope they can carry it out for you.
Marcia Edwards: It is a tough market to do that.
Join Eugene, Oregon, real estate experts: Bob Nelson, Real Estate Investment Broker with Pacwest Real Estate Investments, and Marcia Edwards, Residential Real Estate Broker with Windermere Real Estate, daily at 5:30 on KPNW for the “Real Estate Today” radio show.
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