Hindsight is 20/20.

I recently ran into an investor who I was working for as a selling agent 2 years ago. Without saying names this was the type of client who would look to get as much as possible from his property, without taking anything else into consideration but his own demands.

I marketed his property for over 6 months at fair market value and brought him four contracts. My client would not even consider doing any type of assistance towards the buyer, not a home warranty, closing costs and of course not Down Payment Assistance. The market was coming down in a hurry and I suggested he reconsider not being so demanding in his counteroffers. This gentleman consdered to be doing the buyer a favor simply by selling him this home, which, was a simple run of the mill home for which he had paid cash as an investment.

My client purchased the home for close to 200k cash. I brough him an offer for 320k asking for closing cost assistance( which was perfectly normal for our market at the time), my client countered by actually raising his net even without giving the buyer any assistance. I tried as best I could to make him see that he was making very stringent counteroffers, at one time he wanted part of the counteroffer to reduce both agents commisions.

The home was vandalized 3 times during the year that I was in contact with him and he would still not bend from his frugal ways. I managed to bring the price down as the market was declining by over forty thousand dollars, but, bringing him a contract only upset him and he would refuse to negotiate, relying on the fact that the home was already reduced in price. Of course he would not take into consideration that the market was in a steep decline. Needless to say I was never able to sell his property. Many agents have come and gone and nobody has succesfully closed on that home.

That same home is today worth less than 75K. I was contacted by this client to see if I was willing to lower my commision for the privilege of marketing this home again. I politely declined and went about my business. I had already worked my butt off for this client for over six months and his inability to take advice and my inability to get through to him doomed us from the start. I know he has worked with many agents with that same property with no success.

I wish him the best of luck and truly hope he can get the home sold or leased to at least produce him some income. Unfortunately, I feel his frugaility will stay in the way of a succesful close, regardless of how good the agent is.

I know many of you out there have had a client like this and you feel like you are going to be that great agent who gets through to the seller and is able to come through where other agents failed, only to realize after much time and marketing dollars spent, that it is not the agent in this case but the client who is the problem.

I would offer this advice to any agent out there: If you are presented with a home to sell and it has been on the market for a long time with different agents, look closely and try to find out if theproblem is in fact the seller and not the agents. More often than not, I believe, you will find this to be the case.