One bad apple …

Read below for an email from one of my clients. The takeaways are as follows:

1) I have exceptional clients – calm, understanding and desirous to sell their house.
2) My clients did what they had to do in order to attempt to sell their house; they should not, however, have been put it that situation.
3) Out of approximately 40 showings – they had only one less than satisfactory experience – 98% of Realtors were professional and understanding. We have an outstanding Realtor community.
4) They didn’t bring an offer.
I hate to bother you – I’m sure you’ve got a million things going on, but this is still bugging me this morning, so I wanted to tell you about it.

Yesterday at 12:30, name withheld to protect the guilty (actually one of the three realtors we interviewed) called and asked to show the house between 1:30 and 3:30. That is twice as much of a window as anyone has asked for so far, so I asked her to just give me a 5 minute heads up call so I could gather the kids and clear out. That entire window comes and goes, and I didn’t hear from her. I had friends who were going to come over at 4pm, and so I told them to come on over because it looked like they were no-shows. At 4:45, she calls and gives me the 5 minute heads-up. I told her I now had friends over (and 7 kids in the house), and I had assumed she wasn’t coming. She says they don’t mind if we’re there, but I tell her I’m not comfortable with them coming over while we’re there (7 kids!). I ask her if we can reschedule. She then gets all sleazy car salesman on me and says that they’ve already seen a house that they LOVE and they’re only in town for a week. I ask her if it’s even worth them coming, then, if they already love another house. 5 minutes of this, and it’s clear she’s not hanging up until they come over, so I agree.

The showing itself was actually great. They were a young couple with three kids and asked all of us questions. … My other friend lives in the neighborhood, so she was saying what a great neighborhood it was. I was so mad, and afterwards my friends were teasing me because they said these guys will be the ones to buy the house.

Anyway, if I am being a wuss and you need to tell me to suck it up because this is life selling a house, please do. It just still really bothered me this morning because of all the showing experiences we’ve had, it was such an anomaly. It was initially such a bigger windown than anyone has asked for, and it was especially annoying because TWO other agents called late yesterday afternoon asking for showings (including your mom, actually), and as soon as I even just hesitated that we had company they were both like, “Oh absolutely no problem, you have a life, we’ll work something out and reschedule.”

I’m not even sure why I’m telling you – I guess just so that in your professional experience you can say, “that really stinks” or “that’s what happens sometimes.”