Yes, we have the magic keys that get us into the houses you want to look at, but what else do we offer?  Texas law allows us to represent sellers as listing agents and buyers as Buyer’s Agents and with informed consent of both parties to a transaction, we can be intermediaries, but all that is for another, later, legal discussion.  Today I want to discuss the general services that aren’t often thought of by the consumer.

Historically, we have been the “Keepers of the Information”.  Besides the information the listing agent provides about the listed property, we have data about how long it has been on the market, and perhaps even what the current sellers bought it for.  Also if there have been any price reductions since it was listed and maybe even if it had been under contract before.  We also know a several year history for many properties that include if it had been on the market without selling and even if it has sold several times in the last few years.

This week I have been involved in a couple of difficult transactions that have lead to conversations with my clients about the difficulties of this profession of mine.  They were amazed by the “back story” of the transaction.  Having gone under contract they had no idea of the myriad of things that can go wrong and the cooperation of all these people that allows us to finally get to closing (where the papers are all signed and money changes hands) and everyone leaves happy.  That is the dream of course!

I would say the greatest asset a REALTOR® can bring to the collective table is problem solving skills.  The problem solving skill set combines a number of attributes such as: experience, creativity, proactive thinking, positive mental attitude and the ability to play well with others.  The simple fact of the matter is - things go wrong and sometimes they go very, very wrong.

 You have a party to the transaction that has no sense of urgency and their delay is the first log of the impending jam if someone doesn’t stay on top of things.  It is difficult to keep the emotions out of the transaction and instead keep your eye on the prize.

This job often reminds me of the performer I used to watch on tv as a kid; he had a long thin pole with a china plate on it that he would start spinning then hand it to an assistant. He then started another pole with another plate and gave it to another assistant and then would go back and speed up the first plate that had started slowing down and wobbling while he was busy starting he second plate.  The purpose of the act was to see how many plates he could get up in the air and keep spinning before one finally fell to the floor and broke into pieces. Instead of plates, we have contracts up in the air working frantically at getting inspections done, title issues resolved, lender underwriting requirements met, repairs done and all the while using our magic keys to get us into houses for the next round!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under About. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.