By Living Room Realty, November 30, 2018
Every smooth real estate transaction begins with good communication skills. Whether you are an agent representing a buyers or a seller, there are certain steps you must take when you are under contract on a house. Agents co-oping the deals must TALK to one another in order for a successful transactions to take place. Sounds like a “no-brainer” right? Not exactly.
Every once in awhile, Chris and I will cross paths with another agent in our industry that does not believe in communicating. They go S-I-L-E-N-T right after they accept our buyers offer (ssshhh.. They might be sleeping). They won’t return calls or emails during the entire two week inspection process, making it very tricky to know whats happening. Their lack of communicating, makes for silent holes in the transaction.
Since we can not pick the agents we get to work with, every transaction is different and new. Sometimes we get seriously lucky and get to work with agents like Robin Springer, Dori Olmstead, Tina Schafer, Tony Le, Brenda Gunderson or the Bob Zawaski’s in our industry. But occasionally we end up working with a dud. Case in point, we recently had to terminate a deal with a non-communicative agent. Since it was an agent that we have unluckily worked with before, we were able to warn our buyers to “expect delays” due to poor communication right from the get-go. The trickle down effect of her crappy work ethic made us not be able to do our job well. Its transactions like this one that are spread at cocktail parties. The ones that give real estate a bad reputation. Even though Chris and I worked our ass off to get the bids, meet the inspectors, give good sound advice, without words from the other side, we can’t always hold a deal together.
Now that we are in an age of smart phones, digital files and signatures, title companies with transaction time lines etc. there is little excuse for not being communicative while under contract. All the tools are there for one to use. They simply require using your arms and mouth. There is no excuse not to communicate in this industry.
