Author Archives: Sarah P. Sitton

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First Closing Behind Me-it was a win, but it was an ugly win

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So I was so anxious over so many things with this first closing and really this first deal.  Like I said in my last post, this was an up and down deal and that is being nice.  Well about 2 hours before closing all hell broke loose.  The sellers are from out-of-town and their lawyer had to send them the documents to sign, well he did not send all the right ones.  Then the HUD was wrong; then the listing agency got our deal confused with another and sent over some wrong information and told me some wrong things.  Add to that I find out that the agency does not have any keys for the condo.  The only key is in the lock box. We were just going to give the keys to the lawyer and my buyer was going to pick them up from his office today. The list actually goes on, but I won’t go into full detail.  It took 2 hours of mass confusion, hand holding and getting everything straighten out to get this deal closed.  It was horrible. It was one of those situations where when you think you have put out one fire a new one pops up.  And then everyone starts getting confused as to what is going on and what they are supposed to be doing.  It was ugly.  I never thought to be anxious about finding out at the last-minute that people who have been in the business for longer than you know less than you and that everything is messed up.  But it all got fixed and we were able to close on time and that is that.  So it is a win in my column, but as they say in sports-it was an ugly win.  This whole process was a definite learning experience from beginning to end.  I will remember next time that prior to 2 hours before closing that everyone has everything they need and all is well so that I do not have to go through that again.   Never assume that just because people do this for a living and have been doing it longer than you that they know more than you or really know what is going on.  I am finding that some people around here work this way.  I am just not used to it.  Everything crashing at the last-minute over things that should have been taken care of a week ago, not really what I like to deal with.  So I was anxious over so many things with this closing, but I never saw the disaster that ending up happening actually happening.  And the things I was anxious out, I found out that there was no need to be.  The closing itself was like I remembered when buying other homes-it is really not a big deal and the agent does very little.  The only thing I really did was sit there and sign 1 document as a witness.  So my first deal and closing is behind me, now I can just file it away and move forward to the next one.  Of course now I have to get a next one.  That can cause the anxiety to come back.

First Closing, why am I so anxious?

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So I have my first closing at 4pm today and I am nothing but a ball of nerves. I am anxious over everything. I don’t know why, I don’t really do anything. But this deal has been so up and down that I don’t think I will be able to calm down until all documents are signed and recorded. I mean I am anxious about what to wear. Is this normal for your first closing? I thought waiting to see if our offer got accepted was stressful, but for some reason this just seems a lot more stressfull. I just want everything to go right. Like I said we have had some up and down moments with this deal, so I am really hoping that nothing comes up in closing. I just want everyone to sign the documents with no problems and be able to walk out of there happy that I got through my first full deal and closing. But then of course hanging over you is when are you going to get another one. Real Estate Agent Anxiety; I think if could be a real psychiatric diagnosis. Of course if you looked it up in the dictionary I am afraid you will find a picture of me beside it. I have done a ton of deals before and sat through closing type situations, I don’t know why this one is so different. Well compared to my other sales job, real estate is a completely different business. I just really want this closing to be over with. I know I feel so much better. People keep asking if I am excited about it; how do I explain to them that I am not sure if what I am feeling could be considered excitement. I really don’t know what exactly it is that is causing this anxiety, but I am feeling it. It is more than just it going smoothly, I guess it is also that I don’t screw up. Although based on being the buyer in two deals, my agent did not do a whole lot during the closing. This deal has been a real learning experience for me; good and bad. But soon it will be over and may be then I will feel some excitement. I will let you know.

Which Really is Better-Residential or Commercial?

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So my father was in commercial real estate. Had been for a while, and made a great living doing it. But growing up he was always the business man. Went off to work early in the morning after a home-made breakfast from Mom with briefcase in hand. Went at 8 and was back around 5 or so. That is what he did. Business, it was all business. Now he has just retired, but he would even say things have changed in commercial; not quite what it was. Well I can say whatever he experienced or what it is like now is not what I am experiencing in residential real estate. First, it is nonstop. 8-5, I wish. Second, I think I am too nice and less business. It is too personal and really no business. Hand holding like you are dealing with a 2 year old-yes. In my other sales jobs it has been all business. Relationship building yes, but less personal no. Not like what I thought it would be in residential real estate can be. Even in life insurance I did not know or get as connected with my clients as I do now. So is my struggle in this business is that I am too nice? I am an either or-all business or too personal. I had a deal blow up in my face and took it personally. Well in my defense he did say some things that no one should actually say to another especially a woman. Now I am dealing with another deal and I realized tonight that I am just taking it all too personally. With commercial you don’t get to know all the details of your clients, you don’t get to see pictures of the grandkids. There is a separation. So is that my problem, I get personal and I get too attached? I swear waiting for a client to call me back or especially waiting to find out about a deal-I live by my phone like a 6th grade girl waiting for a boy to call. I get too attached and that causes problems I think. But then may be getting personal with my clients is really a good thing. I don’t know. May be being a real people person and caring is good. Question though is-do I really care? All I know is that when a deal blows up for my father, it is not big deal. My first deal blowing up, I am ready to mainstream wine into my veins. So both are hard, but which is better? I have to say looking at my father’s career has made me wonder if I am cut out for this business, especially after this first lost deal. I guess there are pro’s and con’s to real estate just like any other job. I just wonder what is easier-commercial or residential.

The Great Debate-Open Houses-Yay or Nay

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So when you get into this business many things are thrown at you, especially being at a young age.  It is ten different social networking sites you must be on, a webpage, a Facebook fan page plus running an ad, blogging and the list goes on.  Then add to that you need a slogan, a mission statement and of course a business plan (which is hard to do when you have nothing to really go on.)  And did I mention all the non-social media marketing you need to do-farming, FSBO’s (I have not had any luck with that), expired listings (haven’t had much luck with that either), post cards, expos, networking events, committees you must join, floor duty and this list goes on as well.  As you can tell there is a lot thrown at you that you are told you must do in order to succeed.  However there is one other marketing and lead tool that I have realized stirs up much debate-Open Houses.  Do they or do they not work?  I have done many open houses in this past year and a half, and while I still want to stay positive and say that they will work I have not had much luck with them.  People do come by and take a look at the listing, but when I follow-up with them it is like they have no idea who I am and what I am talking about or I just never hear from them again.  I have yet to gain a lead that actually goes anywhere from an open house.  But many people reading this will completely disagree with me and say that they have gotten a lot of business from open houses.  And some reading this will say that open houses are just a waste of time.  However, there was one open house I did where this nice, sweet old woman accidentally brought me pot brownies and got me higher than a kite.  But of course I did not get any business from her either.  Brownies where good though.  Some days I think I should go and get her recipe and serve them to my clients who are sticks in the mud and the people who stop by at my open houses.  But back to my point-do open houses really work or not?  And if they do work for some-how do you make them work? I would love to know other people’s opinion on this, because I myself am not at the point where I can answer this question.

Reflection of being a rookie in real estate

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When this blog says Adventures in Rookie Real Estate, for me that is completely true-I am a real rookie.  I have only been in the business for a little over a year and a half.  My background is in Engineering sales and business development and life insurance.  I went into this thinking how hard can this be.  Well a year and a half later I can answer that question-VERY HARD.  I have never been in a business where you end up working so much for little return.  Yes people, even my husband, see us working from home, having a flexible schedule and think we have it so easy.  I swear I really think my husband thinks when I am working from home I am really sitting on the couch eating bon bons and watching Ellen and Dr Phil.  Well here is some news, from morning until night I am always working on something.  This has to be the hardest job I have had with little payoff.  May be after I have in this business for a while it will get easier, but right now it is not.  My anxiety level over this job can sometimes be through the roof.  It is not just getting clients that can be a problem-it is getting them to buy that can be the problem.  I have lost many deals simply because no matter how much urgency I put into the situation, for one reason or another they want to wait and then it is too late.  You can bring a horse to water, know and convince them that they are thirsty, but you still cannot make them drink.  It can be quite frustrating.  I have some clients I would like to hit them over the head to get the deal done.  So the question is with all this work for the past year and a half with little pay-off really worth it? Do you walk away or do you keep working hoping that change is right around the corner.  It is a gamble.  And being so new I cannot answer that question.  I just know that I feel like I have put so much into this job to make it work that I want to see a pay off and somewhere inside me I really believe I will.  But if you are new like I am or even thinking about going into this business-make no mistake, it is a hard business.  When you are new, there is nothing that is easy about it.  I was asked recently if I regretted getting into real estate.  To be honest, I am not.  I have a strong belief in myself and know that all I am doing will pay off at some point.  I honestly never in a million years this would end up being the hardest job I have ever had.  And the most expensive.  So that is my reflection being a rookie in real estate

Losing a client especially when it is to death

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We can work with many of our clients for months on listings or trying to find buyers a home.  We get to know them, they get to know us, and we form a relationship with these people. After all the hard work we put in to working with them it is hard to lose a client no matter what the circumstances are.  But in my case I lost my first client to death.  We had been working together for 8 months trying to find him the perfect home all along while he struggled with really retiring down here to Myrtle Beach, SC from Maryland.  We got to know each other in a way that goes beyond an agent/client relationship. We formed a close friendship especially over running.  Finally after all those months he decides to make an offer on a house. However 3 hours later he went for a run in the heat, came inside and dropped dead.  He was in perfect health. All the doctors can figure out that it was coming in from heat to the cool that caused his heart to give out.   And because no contract was in place, his widow is not bound by the offer and now does not want to move.  So I lost a friend and a deal.  Not to make the day worse, while reading his text about the offer I ran into my garage door and messed it up.  I have kept working and kept running, but my heart has not been in it like it was.  I hear about lost deals and clients but this just feels so different from the stories I hear.  How many lose a deal and a client/friend to death?  It took a little while to get my confidence back in both real estate and running; I sort of shut down.  But now I am back.  I am realizing that just because a client/friend and a deal were lost no matter what the circumstances were that does not mean I have to stay off the horse.  It just means I need to get back on the horse and ride harder than before.  So I have lost my first client.  I am really hoping the next client I lose (which will happen again, it always does) it will be to expired agreement not death.

Got doped on Pot Brownies by a 75 year old little woman

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So doing an open house last week in the nice small neighborhood near the beach and with a nice neighborhood private pool.  Perfect location, great home and the neighbors just seem so sweet. Everyone came by to meet me and speak to me.  This dear, LITTLE, older woman who was in her mid to late 70’s comes over with a plate of brownies for me.  I had seen her at the pool with her grandchildren earlier and she told me that she just hated thinking of real estate agents at open houses getting hungry.  So I am thinking what is the harm; I have seen her with her grandchildren; and the brownies looked to die for.  And yes I was hungry.  So while talking to her and showing her the house I eat 4 of them, then she gives me 2 more to take to my husband and well I ate those too.  Small problem, eating them was the last thing I remember and according to my husband came home stoned off my rear end.  He was worried and called his uncle who is a doctor and his uncle confirmed that I was stoned and those must have been hash brownies I ate.  The only thing I can think is that she could have something like glaucoma and puts the pot in brownies and then having her grandchildren staying with her for the week made a regular batch, but brought me the wrong ones.  She had grandchildren, so I doubt she was feeding them pot and she was so sweet I don’t think she would really try to poison me nor if she knew they had pot in them would have let me eat so many.  So yes another crazy story-I got doped at an open house.  I am glad I didn’t get pulled over because how would I explain my behavior to a cop.  Especially since I don’t remember getting home and kept swearing to my husband that nothing could be wrong with me.  They were REALLY good brownies, pot aside.  I work with some strange customers and seem to end up with the craziest stories.  I really thought I had seen it all in sales with an engineering firm and in life insurance.  However, I have been told that the craziness just doesn’t ever stop coming.  Pot brownies are a new one in my office, but crazy stories are part of the job. Lesson Learned, I will just know in the future to NEVER take food from someone no matter how old and sweet they seem.

Impossible Clients

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Ever have those clients who are either all over the board on what they are looking for or so specific you just want to sell them land and let them build a house? Well I have two clients who fall into this category.  One has no clue what he wants.  He says he knows what he wants, but he doesn’t. He wants a house between 200k-500k, somewhere in our market (which is huge) but doesn’t matter what city, doesn’t matter how many bedrooms or bathrooms or whether it has a garage or not, or even the square footage of the house.  Really has no specifics at all.  In our market we have over 2,000 homes that are in his price range.  And on the other hand I have a client who wants a condo on a golf course, with one bedroom facing the golf course, a patio or deck, three bedrooms, at least 2 ½ baths, a pool in the complex near the condo, a good size kitchen with breakfast bar, hard wood floors and if all possible a wet bar.  And can come with a golf package.  Both say they are motivated to buy now, but their actions do not say so.  So they have me running around searching places and calling places to see if they offer golf packages to owners, and I know in the back of my head that they are not really motivated buyers.  But they keep wanting me to search here and there, all while wasting my time when I could be spending even more time with clients I know are going to buy.  So what exactly do you do with clients like these?  You want to just dump them on the door of another agency, but you can’t do that.  Yet you cannot waste all your time on people like this.  Especially when one is so up in the air that he can’t make a decision on anything you show him from the MLS or even come close to narrowing down his search.  All he says is he will know the house when he sees it.  The other is so specific it is impossible to find him something that meets all his needs.  Did I mention he even wants the kitchen cabinets a certain color and the master bathroom to have a jetted tub and stand up shower?  That is the impossible find.  Especially when he wants it to come with a golf package.  I would love to strangle both.  And of course both call or email me at least once a day to check on progress.  I am very good with follow up and keeping my clients informed on what I am doing for them.  But I normally do not check in every day when I have nothing to report.  So on one hand they seem like eager buyers, but truly eager buyers are not this up in the air or this narrow in specifics.  I have noticed that the more eager ones have an idea of what they want, but they are willing to not get exactly everything they want and realize that if they want hardwood floors, then they will install them if their dream house does not come with them.  This gentleman doesn’t want to do any work on the condo.  He wants it to come exactly as he has stated.  Impossible clients, nightmare clients-you can’t really afford to kick them to the curb, but you can’t also work too hard for them since you have a stack of better clients you need to be working with.  Somehow I always get the nightmare clients or situations.  Beginners lack of luck.  All I can do is try my best, not work too hard on them but n0t forget about them either. They may buy at some point, just not anytime soon. I have better clients to deal with who will be buying soon, so I can’t waste all my time with people won’t be buying anytime soon.  Even if they seem eager, they are not.  Unfortunately I have been down this road before, so I have learned the hard way who is really eager and who just says they are eager and have you running around in circles for them.

First Potential Sale Blown by Nightmare Sellers and a Disasterous Situation

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So I have these clients who loved this one neighborhood.  It is near highways and get you anywhere in the Grand Strand in minutes, but off a road that keeps you away from the traffic.  A real kid friendly neighborhood-even has a basketball goal at the end of a cul-de-sac for people to use.  It is a little too perfectly creepy for me.  It is a new development and all the homes seem to be the same and there are no trees.  But my clients loved everything about it.  So we found them a house they loved.  The pictures of the outside and inside were perfect.  They just knew it was going to fit all their needs and could really see themselves having a family here and living here for a long time.  So I set up a showing appointment and even call the listing agent the day before just to remind her we are coming.  No problem she said, her clients knew all about it. Great I thought-this was going to be an easy sell.  So off we go the next evening to see my clients’ dream home.  Perfect on the outside, the wife is almost giddy with excitement.  Then we walk in…  The house was a disaster.  Looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, dirty dishes in the sink, closets were a disaster and dirty clothes coming out of the hamper; clothes on the floor.  The look on their faces went from excitement to disgust.  So I calmly, since I am about to scream, try to do some damage control and suggest may be something happened and we can come back another time to look at the inside, but let’s go look at the backyard and see the rest of the outside.  I know the inside can always be cleaned up, but I want them to like the rest of the house. Of course, I am not even buying what I am saying to them.  But out to the deck we go.  And in the backyard, straddling what has to be the property line is the largest wooden playhouse-fort-swing set I have ever seen.  It goes into half of both houses’ backyards.  My clients hate it.  I am no idiot but this kind of monstrosity can kill a deal and a closing.  And it is heavily anchored into the ground, so it will not be easy to just move.  This showing was a nightmare.  I knew of no way to recover from this.  I just kept apologizing and saying I would call the listing agent and get to the bottom of this.  They, not surprisingly, kept telling me not to bother. At this point I am ready to kill this listing agent.  So they go tearing out of the driveway, and I get on the phone.  Well, the agent is barely shocked over the state of the house and is asking me what the big deal is over the play set.  Well she must have gone over to the house today, because she is now singing a different tune.  She was very apologetic over the state of the house, and it seems that the play set had been moved from one backyard to both since she was last there a month ago.  Last night she probably thought I was just with overly picky buyers and that I didn’t know a thing about property lines or encroachments and was just being a witch with a capital “B”.  Glad she now knows I wasn’t lying or over-reacting and that yes this deal is blown. Do these sellers know that they are selling their house?  I know they knew we were coming; did they really think leaving the house in such a fashion was going to get it sold?  I would really like to know what they were thinking.  I have done some open houses and known the house was never going to sell because there was too much personality in it and a buyer was never going to be able to overlook it all to be able to put themselves in the picture.  Same problem here.  With all the clutter and dirt, my clients could not look past it and see what they thought was their dream home.  So my easy sell just went from easy to a hard to keep them as clients’ situation.  They don’t blame me and of course there are other homes in the neighborhood for sale that I am going to show them, but this was their dream home and the image of what it looked like on the inside and in the backyard is never going to leave their minds.  I am really going to have to find something 100x better to get them to buy any time soon.  Notice to all listing agents-NEVER let this happen and staging a home does go a long way in getting a home sold.  If that place had been great condition, staged and the monstrosity had not been in the backyard, instead of writing this post I could be writing a contract.  A perfect and easy deal blown by nightmare sellers.  But who is at fault here-the sellers or the listing agent? I may be new at this, but in my opinion-both.

New technology meets old technology

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I got out of going to a meeting this evening that is all about setting up a Facebook fan page.  They are going to learn how to do it from a-z and even what to name it.  The problem is I have one, I use it all the time and I have plenty of people who like it.  I have even gotten a few leads from it.  I have it connected to Real Bird to posts on it houses for sale and foreclosures so many times a day, it is connected to market and basic real estate information for Myrtle Beach, I am working on a Welcome Page and Link page for information for Myrtle Beach, etc. So I didn’t really need a session on walking me through setting up a fan page when I am way ahead of the game.  But that is the problem I face, I am ahead of the game when it comes to all new technology in my office.  I even use the new MLS program that we have come out with.  My BIC doesn’t even know how to use this new program, and she my age.  And when they see my business cards with my QR code on it they look at it as if it is some foreign alien image to them-which I guess it is.  I talk about running ads on Facebook, blogging on other things besides real estate on WordPress to get leads, linking WordPress to Twitter and Facebook and QR codes, and their faces go blank.  However, talk about direct marketing mailings, working expireds, FSBO’s and open houses, and they can talk for hours about that.  I am not saying everyone should be using the new technology or it will apply with the way the run their business, but they should at least be aware about it.  They should at least not be so shocked that social media does work and I have gotten leads for Facebook, as well as my running blog that is connected to Twitter and my networking and direct marketing.  They both can work if you work them both correctly.  Of course it does not help me if I have a question on our MLS program and no one in the office can answer my question because I am the only one who uses it.  I guess I will be busy in May when the phase out the old program.  Sometimes I often feel like they look down at me as this new agent coming in with all my social media ways; like somehow their ways are better than mine.  Neither one-on-one marketing nor social media marketing is better than the other, but statics show how much time people spend on Facebook and other social sites, so it only makes sense to try to connect to people there as well.  You still have to do the one-on-one networking and marketing.  So in my office it is really new technology meets old technology and old technology has no desire to learn about new or use it.