Searching for a new home, while exciting as it can be, often can be a very emotionally exhaustive exercise for a Buyer. How does a Real Estate Agent help a buyer with ‘Home Shopping Fatigue’?
Don’t know if you have ever had a chance to dine at the Cheesecake Factory. Wow what a menu! Choices upon choices and more choices; in fact about 50 pages of them. As intoxicating as that may sound, you can spend a half hour just trying to decide what to order. My waiter comes back after about five minutes and says ‘Are you ready to order yet’? and I have to tell him “I’m only on page five of ten of the appetizer section of the menu sorry”.
Where an agent brings value to his client is by quickly learning and understanding the needs and wants of a buyer, which can often be two separate things.
The problem lies here: ‘What a Buyer doesn’t know, he doesn’t know’. An experienced agent realizes that a buyer often starts with an idea or picture in his head, but after viewing actual properties their ideas, needs and wants will tend to evolve. It is important to listen and ask thought provoking questions which will require the Buyer to honestly evaluate and discern where they can be flexible and where they cannot. No home will ever give you 100%, even if you build it from scratch, after you were done there would be things you wished you did different. Try this with each property:
- A good technique is to give each home a nick name. That will help you better recall them, because after viewing a number of homes they can blur.
- Rate each home 1 to 5 stars and half stars count, even quarter stars if need be. This will assist in the process of elimination as you rehash the homes you visited. It will also help clearly define which things on the list are more important.
Once you have a clear picture of their needs, wants and desires, you as an agent can assist them by narrowing the search criteria to homes that will conform more closely to the items they cannot compromise on. Remember that your client is not just buying a house, their buying a home. Happy House Hunting!
