Not that long ago I found myself writing an offer with a client that I'd only met once and only showed one home to.  This isn't necessarily the norm, but it happens often enough.  One of the challenges with a situation like this is that the relationship is still very young, and I know it takes time to develop trust and rapport.  In this case, it was pretty clear that I hadn't yet earned that trust from this client. 

I am extremely conscientious when it comes to serving my clients and I know that I am always offering the very best advice I can to serve my client's best interest.  I know that.  However in this case, the client didn't yet know that. 

The scenario was an all-to-common one in Winnipeg's hot Real Estate market. We were in competition against two other offers.  The price the client had suggested offering was a good one, and I felt pretty confident (as confident as you can ever feel) that he stood a good chance of winning this bid.  His terms were good, and the price he suggested was exactly what I felt would win the deal. 

Then he suddenly changed his mind.  At the last minute, as we were writing up the offer, he decided to reduce his offer by a substantial amount (about 5% of the value).  I knew that this lower offering price was never going to win him the home.  I let him know that, because he was competing against two other offers, he should not expect a counter-offer. My first thought was that maybe he'd changed his mind about wanting this home, so I asked him that very question.  He insisted that he did want the home very much.  I asked why he was reducing his offer by so much and he told me he thought that's all it would take to get the deal.  I was sure this was wrong and it was going to cost him the house. 

The whole thing just didn't add up to me.  Here he was insisting that he wanted the home, he was financially ready to make the purchase at his original offer, and I was telling him as plainly as I could that I didn't think his lower offer would hold up, and yet he wasn't listening. Why not?  It was then that I realized the problem. He didn't trust me.  He didn't trust that I had his best interests in mind. He felt, I'm sure, that I was just trying to talk him into spending more to increase my own commissions.  Huh.

In reality, I can understand why he'd feel that way.  We'd known each other for such a short time and he had no reason to trust me...yet.  I'm sure if we'd have spent more time looking at more houses, he'd have recognized that my intentions were honorable and it would have been a different story.  But in this case, it didn't work out that way.  In this case, he was really only interested in this one home and we hadn't spent any time working together, outside of looking at this one home. 

In the end, we wrote up the offer just as he wanted with the lower price and I presented his offer.  Not surprisingly, I received a call a short time later letting me know that his offer had been declined. I phoned my client back to pass along the news and he seemed genuinely surprised. He asked if he could increase his offer to price he'd originally suggested and I told him it was, sadly, too late to do that.  They'd already accepted another offer.  

The home sold for exactly the same price as he'd started out intending to bid, but with terms that were less favorable than our offer.  It was frustrating because I knew that if he'd have just trusted my advice he'd have purchased the home he wanted, but there was little I could do at the time to persuade him.  All of the benefit I brought to the equation was negated because I didn't yet have his trust. It was disappointing. However, there was a lesson in all this.  I don't blame him for not trusting me. It's understandable.  But he would have been much better off if he had established a relationship based on trust with ANY competent REALTOR and followed the advice he was given. 

This is why it is so important to develop a relationship with your REALTOR early on in the process.  Ask lots of questions and pay attention.  Find out if you can trust this person and, once you've established that you can, make use of the advice they offer.  If your REALTOR is working to serve your best interests above all others - something we're all called to do all that time - rely on his or her experience and professionalism.  And if you decide that, for whatever reason, you can't trust your REALTOR... find a new REALTOR!