What’s for you won’t go by you. 

I know… It’s a platitude…

Platitude: A remark or statement, especially one with moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful.

This flat, overused statement comes back to haunt me in every real estate transaction I make. Welcome to the year of the seller. Most houses on the market are pure gold bars with 9, 15, 22 offers from a disappointed and tired pool of buyers who have been swimming upstream for far too long. Sometimes this daunting process can seem too big a hill to tackle for weary buyers and real estate agents alike. 

I get it. 

I understand it. 

I have been living it. 

What have I learned? 

Know everything. Then know it better. If you are going to sell real estate do the research and understand the market where you are buying. What did the last 4 houses in the immediate neighbourhood sell for? Who sold them? Have you spoken to the listing agent? Had a really good conversation with the listing agent? About things not on the listing and what their process has been like? DON’T LOOK ON HOUSE SIGMA TO GET A REALISTIC MARKET EVALUATION. That goes for both buyers and real estate agents. If you are my buyer, don’t have one of your comments in the middle of house negotiations start with, ”But on house sigma…”

Just don’t. It’s just an app. It doesn’t have boots on the ground. 

If you are one of my precious buyers, and know that you are precious to me, I promise you we will find the right house/condo/cottage for you. I had a couple of buyers once who, after looking at 50 homes over a year, found the perfect place. They offered along with 17 others. They didn’t get the house. Then began a long year where I heard over and over about how this new house was great and was perfect but it just wasn’t as good as the one we had lost. Ad nausam. 

Until… It was better. And those buyers bought the house that they were meant to have after a lot of trial and error and after we both learned a lot more about the market we were in.

I am not suggesting we take 2 years to buy a house. NOPE. I am not. I think when you know as a buyer that it is the right home for you, you know and you will put all your best feet forward. Your agent will know the market and the houses that have sold and why the one on the corner went for sooo much more and who that listing agent is and how they price things.

As a buyer, if you can be fluid enough to compromise on small things that can be fixed or changed easily, you will find the process easier… Not easy, but easier. Trust your agent, and tell them what you want and what you need and hopefully you find some joy in the search. As an agent, if you can know everything and have a good rapport with other agents, and be fluid enough to listen to what your buyers really want and what they can let go of, you will find the process easier… not easy, but easier.

And… every once in awhile, if you can both bring a little gritty dirty sweat into the thing, you, my friends, will have the thing that was not meant to pass you by. I had some buyers years ago who used to tell me they had bad luck with houses and they just never bought the right place. They don’t say that anymore (thank goodness).

Knowledge is power. I never stop learning in this business. 

If it’s for you it won’t go by you…

I won’t let it.