I was recently approached at an open house by a buyer who wasn't interested in the house I was showing, but she said she wanted to work with me. Her price level was between $2 - $3 million, and she was an all cash buyer. To prove it she even pulled out her phone and offered to show me her bank balance.
“No, that’s really okay, I don’t need to see your bank balance right now.” I replied.
She did anyway, which made me uncomfortable, and her Wells Fargo account had over $20 million in it. I was thinking to myself, this really isn’t right. She should not be showing people she just met how much money she has in her bank account! While like all Realtors, I am licensed by the state of California, a desperate person could easily could cook up some kind of scheme to steal from her. It was kind of like she was painting a target on her back.
I agreed to start helping her out, which is pretty unusual for me. I typically only work with buyers who are family, friends, referrals, or people who get my newsletters and/or read my blogs. In my 17 years of selling real estate full-time I’ve only ‘picked up’ two open house buyers and I actually ended up selling them something. When I list a property, my focus is on selling that house, not trying to attract new buyer clients.
We started calling, emailing, and texting. My new client would contact me at night and in the morning. We worked together fairly intensively for about two weeks. I literally dropped what I was doing one Saturday to unexpectedly show her properties in San Rafael and Novato. She was very active and serious about buying, and right before I walked away from her, she was talking about making an offer on a $3 million house. There was only one problem. She wanted to offer $1.7 or $1.8. Since the house was new on the market, that offer seemed like it would be a complete waste of time. There was no way the sellers were going to come down that far that fast, even if her offer was all-cash with no contingencies and a short close.
After the first week of working together, I sent her a listing for $2.6 that was ‘Coming Soon’. The coming soon status is available to Realtors, and not the general public. She had responded to other emails from me about properties but said nothing about this one so I thought she was uninterested. At the end of the second week working together, she called me to say she had just seen that same house with another Realtor and was going to make an offer. “You’re working with another Realtor?” I asked.
“I have 3 Realtors working for me!” She exclaimed with pride.
‘And now you only have 2’ I thought to myself. It was at that time I explained to her that I don’t work with buyers who are working with multiple Realtors. Because we work on 100% commission, it’s just not a good business practice. That means 2 of the 3 Realtors won’t be paid, even if she ever finds a house she wants to buy and makes an acceptable offer.
As Realtors we have the option to present buyers with exclusive representation contracts. They are rarely used in Marin County, but in this case, it would have saved me a lot of time and effort if I had at least broached the subject of other Realtors when I first started working with her. My bad. It’s been years since I have been in that situation, but it has happened before. Lesson learned, again.