Boise Real Estate Blog

How I Work With Buyers

I have been busy previewing homes this week as I prepare for buyers who are coming to Boise to buy a home this weekend.

These clients are spending upwards of $2,000 on this weekend’s buying trip, have their present home(s) sold, and are serious buyers with pre-approved financing.

They are depending upon me to be diligent in finding the right home for them and I feel a strong sense of responsibility to deliver a positive outcome.

I have always believed that it’s more professional for me to find the homes that best match my buyers’ criteria before they arrive.

Before I start looking for solutions, I like to counsel my buyers and understand their needs, wants, likes, and dislikes.

Then, I start my property search and preview homes to eliminate the obvious mismatches before showing homes.

Previewing is WORK, which is perhaps why many buyer agents just stuff buyers in their car and show them homes until they are bleary-eyed and confused.

I think that practice is highly unprofessional and wastes a buyer’s valuable time.

For this particular client, my initial MLS search turned up about 100 homes that met their broad general criteria of location, square footage, bedrooms, and price.

I narrowed the field to about 25 homes by reviewing the listings, then I started previewing homes to confirm condition, location, quality of construction, floor plan, etc.

Here are some of the more interesting things I experienced as I previewed those homes this week:

• Homes with strange floor plans where I had to walk through bedrooms to get to other rooms.
• A foreclosed home with a stunning view of the traffic on a main arterial with undeveloped land on two sides (who knows what will be built there?)
• Homes backing to major roads that will only get busier in the future.
• A home with a long, winding driveway past other homes (flag lot) and a side-entry garage so narrow that I couldn’t turn my Acura MDX around.
• A home that had an unfinished home (with unpaid liens) on one side and an obvious rental property with a crummy oil-leaking car on the other side.
• A seller who told me of a previous offer asking them to pay the buyer’s closing costs (common in our market these days) and said “if they can’t afford to pay their closing costs, they can’t afford to buy my house!”, followed by “we’re not gonna give it away!” (overpriced and on the market 200+ days!).
• A home strewn with dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and plates of uneaten food on the table.
• Several homes that reeked of cigarette smoke.
• A seller who wouldn’t let me in to preview after I had left a message on her voicemail (Realtor^® owned with showing instructions stating “Call First/Use Lockbox”).
• A home with a lockbox that had the screen door locked (couldn’t access the lockbox).
• A two-story home with a window-mounted air conditioner in the upstairs master (a good clue that the HVAC system is inadequate?).
• A home with showing instructions stating “Call First/Use Lockbox” that had no lockbox (sellers are keeping lockbox inside, putting it out if they know of a planned showing, and forgot to put it outside).
• A home that requires an appointment to view with a seller who never returned my call.
• Several homes with dogs inside (I have been bitten more than once by a “friendly” dog).
• A listing that warned “be careful – Fluffy the cat will bite”.
• Several sellers who were surprised I was there after I left a message that I was coming (does anyone check their voicemail anymore?).

Yes, it has been a lot of work but this is my chosen profession and I take it seriously.

The bottom line?

I have identified four homes out of my initial 100 MLS search results that meet my buyer’s criteria and two of them are drop-dead gorgeous, priced right, and have motivated sellers.

It feels good to know that I am going into this weekend having done my job and that I am well-prepared.

Stay tuned for results of this weekend’s buyer !

June 11th, 2009 Posted in Inside Real Estate  Print This Post