I was recently reminded of the ‘good faith’ component needed in real estate. I was helping James buy his first home at 75 years of age. James had worked diligently his entire life, raised his children primarily on his own and was able to sock away a little nest egg. James had lived most of his life in a metropolitan area where homeownership was out of the reach of many residents including my client. While visiting his daughter in Boise he realized he could afford to buy a home here and live closer to his daughter to boot.
After a few misses we finally secured a home and had an accepted offer. I was now planted firmly in the shoes of some one that had never gone through the process of buying a home, none of his children had bought homes, he did not even have internet, a computer and the ability to search out information online. I became his source of all information real estate related. At the same time my son was helping me create a new and improved website www.kelly-sells.com and he mentioned it would be nice to have a FAQ page for people like him that don’t know what things like escrow are. It stuck home how much trust buyers and sellers put into their real estate professionally and how often we may not explain the many nuances as we should. After many years in the business, dealing with all the ins and outs of a transaction I think realtors often forget that our clients don’t deal with such things daily.
After the home inspection James went back to his home in another state to start packing. I received a call soon after asking when it would be ok to put in his change of address request with the post office, when would we know it was all going to work out ok? As agents we really rarely see deals fall apart, and if they do it is during the inspection period. If a deal falls apart after the inspection period it is usually due to a financing issue the buyer faces, buyer remorse or a lender that didn’t properly qualify a buyer. In a market like we are experiencing now, with prices rapidly increasing, we now occasionally run into appraisal issues that can turn an offer sideways. Buyers and sellers daily but their trust and faith in the real estate professional to keep the transaction progressing smoothly and close on time.
