There are numerous ones, I guess. But laziness and indifference towards one’s buyer’s needs are the ones that annoy me the most. Case in point: Christina and I were hired to sell a couple’s house in Skokie last week. We managed to sell it within a few days (more about that in another post), and as of last night, the contract was approved by both buyers and sellers.

While I was negotiating the contract with the buyer’s agent yesterday, another agent calls Christina to inquire about the property. Christina tells her that there is a party seriously interested in the house, and has actually submitted an offer. However, their offer has not been approved by the sellers as of yet, and that she’d encourage the (second buyer’s) agent to show it to her buyer. The agent’s response: “Nah, I don’t want to waste my time. Just give me a call, in case the deal falls apart” (not verbatim).

Excuse me? I mean, with gasoline prices flirting with the $4 mark, I understand that many agents prefer not to make unnecessary road trips. But skipping the showing of a property to one’s buyer client, because it just went under contract, is (ahem) reckless, not to mention a breach of one’s fiduciary duties. You see, when a buyer’s sales/purchase contract is accepted by the sellers, there is still a long road to be traveled before the parties can meet at the closing table to finalize the transaction. There is the home inspection that may change the buyer’s minds about their particular purchase decision, there are the attorneys who may make modifications to the contract (except to the price and dates), there is the appraisal that may come in below the agreed-upon sale price, and most importantly, there is the buyers’ mortgage application that still needs to be approved by their lender. The metaphor “walking on eggshells” comes to mind here. Any one of these hurdles can send the transaction into an uncontrollable tailspin, at any point in time.

These risk factors are what we call “contingencies”. While all parties to the transaction are collectively holding their breath, waiting for these contingencies to be removed one by one, we listing agents (at least those of us who earn our living) aren’t sitting on our hands, making plans for our next vacation in the Carribean. No ma’am, we realize that the old adage in real estate is: “It ain’t sold, until everybody walks away from the closing table”. Hence, we continue to show the property to other buyer prospects. Why? Because, we’d like to have a backup plan in place, in case something bad happens to our first transaction. Why then would a buyer’s agent dismiss a property, only because it just went under contract, or is about to be “sold”.

I’ll tell you what we’d do, when we’re on the buyer’s side, and encounter a CTG property: We show it, and not only that, if our clients like it enough to own it, we write up a contract on it and submit it to the sellers (via their listing agent) as a backup offer. I mean, I understand the concept of a buyer’s market and the fact that there is lots of inventory to choose from, therefore it’s no harm to skip one property and go on to the next. But let’s be honest here: When your buyer walks into a house or condo that is just what they were looking for (love at first sight, so to speak), a buyer’s market doesn’t mean much any longer now, does it?

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