Macomb County MI real estate - 1st time home buyers info & advice

I wrote a blog post earlier about appraisals, and what we as buyers agents can do to help our buyer clients to understand current market value and to avoid appraisal issues.

One of the comments I recieved said something like "You may not make the sellers happy..." 

I'm a nice person.  I like to think that I'm an easy agent to co-op with, and that I do perform my duties with care and diligence.  My brokers have never received a complaint about me, nor do I ever expect them to. However, being nice and co-operating with the sellers agents doesn't mean that I won't do my job to the best of my ability for my client - the buyers.

My fiduciary responsibility as a buyers agent is to my buyers.  When they find a home they wish to purchase my responsibility kicks in to high gear.  I will analyze the current market for them and present them with all of the facts that I have on hand.  They will then be able to make an educated decision about the price to offer for the home. I will then take their offer to purchase, along with my data and present it to the sellers. 

Not long ago I heard these words from a sellers agent after my buyers offer was presented to them: "My seller is a nice man.  He's worked hard, and his home is in good shape.  He really deserves a better offer and isn't happy with this one."

My reply?  "I'm a nice lady.  I work hard.  My home is in nice shape.  I deserve good things to happen to me. But my home is still only work XXX and it wouldn't appraise for more than XXX, and I surely wouldn't expect a  buyer to pay more than XXX."

               My buyer didn't overpay for that home, and we moved on to find them another home.

Listing agents need to keep their sellers in the loop.  Sellers need to know current market values.  They need to understand the danger of overpricing their home, and have realistic expectations of a sales price.  All sellers  deserve this information from their agents on a regular basis - not just the nice sellers :-)

The common misconception about Buyers Agents is that we take people out to look at a few homes, write the offers, then sit back and collect a paycheck.

Misconception?   What an understatement!

Take for example what goes on behind the scenes before we ever step foot in a home with our buyer clients:

• Talk with the buyers about their wish list / want list / must have list in a home.
  
  
• Sort through all of the thousands of listings in the various MLS databases, narrowing
  down only those that fit the buyers criteria.
  
  
• Research the property taxes on the properties.  (I'll let you know about the importance
  of this in a separate post.)
  
  
• Check the ownership of the home (looking for conflicting information in public records)
  
  
• Sifting through the comments and photos to ascertain whether a home meets your financing
  criteria (Will the condo be HUD approved?  Will the home pass FHA or VA muster?)
  
  

A good buyers agent will spend hours behind the scenes working in the buyers best interests before they ever step foot into a home.    But you the buyer don't know that, because we don't give you a detailed invoice of work performed like other professionals do.   The list above is only  a snapshot of what a buyers agent does for you.  The list goes on and on during the process of purchasing your home.  

How do you know if we have done a good and thorough job for you?   When you get to the closing table thrilled with the purchase of your new home, with as little stress as possible, and without any surprises.   We willingly take on the stress and sleepless nights so that you don't have to.

I received an ActiveRain contact email from a young lady at 1:50 p.m.    I returned her email at a little after 2 this afternoon, and we spoke a few minutes later.

In her email she stated "..am having trouble reaching an agent to help me."  During our phone conversation she stated that I was the 5th agent that she has contacted, and I'm the only one to return her call.

Mind boggling isn't it?   Absolutely mind boggling.

What does this young lady want to do?   She wants to look at homes for sale. Simple enough.  She wants to see some homes. 

The only excuse I can think of that she hasn't had calls returned is because she was contacting the listing agents instead of first contacting a buyers agent.   Maybe in time all of us who represent buyers as our profession will be able to spread the word so far and so often that potential buyers will no longer feel like they have to call the name on the sign to see a home.

Edit:  The young lady just wrote to me and gave me permission to post this article. She explained further:  2 of the agents she called were the listing agents.  No return phone calls.  2 other agents weren't the listing agents, and in fact one of them set her up with a Listingbook account then dropped off the face of the earth.  No return calls from this agent - and it's been 9 days.

Once again:  Mind boggling.