Buying a home: Every minute counts in real estate
Five years ago, James and I were looking to buy a home in the Bay Area. This was going to be the house we were to live in for many years to come — like most other home buyers in America, we were dreaming about our perfect house.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, real estate is the perennial hot commodity, this was a time when homes were being gobbled up left and right (but then when hasn’t?). Like most other home buyers in America, we did our homework. We spent several months searching, going to 50+ open houses over the course of a year. We were told…
In order to have a chance at buying a place here, you have to call the agent the same day the house comes onto the market.
You have to outbid the ten other buyers who are interested in the same house. Be aggressive, look for any cracks in the system for you to gain advantage. You have to truly understand the game to win.
Checking the Redfin app to see if there were any new listings that day took precedence over my bathroom routine every morning. Being one of the first people to view a new listing was crucial, in case you got the opportunity to snatch up a house before too many people knew about it. Seeing a hot new listing was like sitting in the front row at the Worldwide Developers Conference watching Steve Jobs announcing a fresh new iPhone. Scheduling a viewing was like waiting in line with other rabid fans at the downtown Apple Store, anxiously anticipating the doors opening. Unfortunately, this Apple Store only had a limited supply, and only one in every ten people actually went home with a new iPhone.
A listing popped up that seemed perfect. I tried the Redfin app to schedule a viewing. I figured that I’d been using their website for hours and hours every day for the past year, and I should actually do some business with them.
I kept looking at this listing over and over, imagining my furniture in it and filling my head with all the joy and excitement at the possibility of owning this perfect home. I checked my inbox every 20 minutes, wondering whether I should keep waiting for Redfin to get back to me with the viewing schedule or find a new agent. As the hours dragged on, I started getting dizzy with despair. Then I got this email.
NOOOOO!!! Damned auto emails. Especially when they’re telling me the bad news, and especially after I had already been waiting for several hours. I had dealt with a lot of shady apps that screwed up or delayed delivery orders in the past, but this was different. Heck, this was going to be the biggest purchase we would ever make. And they were totally messing it up.
After several back and forth emails and phone calls trying to schedule a showing…
The house went pending before I even got a chance to see it. My hopes were crushed. I kept beating myself up thinking that things would have turned out better had I gone with a different agent.
When it comes to helping people buy and sell homes, real estate businesses cannot afford to make any mistakes.
I t took only one bad experience for me to lose faith in a business. Buying a home is one of the most special moments anyone will ever experience — something that most Americans do only once or twice in their lifetime, similar to getting married. Can you imagine what kind of shit flies when a photographer or a caterer screws up someone’s wedding?
Trust in real estate is built upon communication. Based on the 2015 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report, 94% of home buyers say that responsiveness is one of the key traits of a great real estate agent. That’s why the best agents I’ve ever worked with are the ones that answered my emails or calls immediately and effectively at all hours of the day.
And that’s because the good agents know. They know that this is a cutthroat business in a high stakes game. And they know that every minute and every second counts in real estate.
