Property sellers have many reasons to be emotional during final negotiations. They are going through a major change, making vital decisions and dealing with transactions that most likely represent the biggest investment of their lives. Your role as a real estate broker in this situation, and the key to your success, lies in two main things: Be prepared and Protect the seller's interests at every step of the process.
Be prepared
If you prepare carefully before presenting the seller with an offer to purchase, you can shorten your meeting time. You should also be prepared for counteroffers, keep their emotions in check, and focus your client's attention on the next steps. Follow these simple tips to achieve success:
- First and foremost, stay calm no matter what the value of the deal.
- Go carefully through all the details of the offer submitted by the buyer and look for potential issues that need to be addressed at this stage.
- Highlight points on the contract that the seller should pay particular attention to when reading it during your meeting. If you are sending the document in an email, make a brief presentation of these points right at the beginning. This way, the property seller doesn't have to go into every detail of the contract on their own. That's your job.
If your meeting takes place online or over the phone instead of in person, email the offer to your client minutes after you start the call. For example, if you've scheduled your online meeting for 2:00 p.m., have your paperwork ready between 1:30 and 1:45 p.m. You don't want to waste the salesperson's time waiting for you to prepare during the meeting itself. You also don't want them looking at you with countless questions and panicking.
Protect the seller's interests at all times
The worst thing that can happen to property sellers is for the deal to fall apart a few days before closing. By then, depending on the case, they are likely to have selected a property they want to purchase after the sale. They've already made plans to move and suddenly, it all falls through. So everyone, including you, wastes valuable time and money.
A seller's biggest enemy are the days their property is on the market. If the offer on the property is taken off all channels within a long period of time, when you re-upload the offer, those days matter. For example, if the property was going to sell 3 days after going on the market and the failed deal took 30 days, when the property goes back on the market it makes 33 days on the market.
Such an incident is a consequence of the real estate broker not fully protecting the seller's interests. Follow these tips to minimize this type of situation:
- Require the potential buyer to deposit enough money upfront to secure the deal and your client's position. Set the deposit amount high enough so that the buyer cannot purchase another property until both parties' interests are protected. Not everyone would back out of a deal where they have put down EUR 5 000 or EUR 10 000. This amount can also be calculated as % of the sale value of the property.
Unfortunately there are estate agents who agree to take a 1 000 EUR deposit, which can be a very wrong move. - Take note of where the buyer's financing is coming from. Ask him to provide you with proof of credit approval. You need to make sure he can actually afford the property within up to two weeks of accepting the terms of the deal.
- Remember, at every step of the process, you must protect the interests of your client - the seller. Put specific clauses in the purchase and sale agreement that serve them.
