Keith Strawn

A Realtor called today for advice on a sticky negotiation. My friend was acting as a buyer's agent.

It seems after this Realtor's initial written offer, the two agents fell into the trap of trying to speed things up by hashing the rest out verbally, and then putting it on paper once everything was agreed upon.

Not difficult to figure how this drama unfolded. By the time the details were put "on paper," there were all kinds of disagreements about who had agreed to what.

Verbal agreements are just a bad idea. It's not even a matter of not trusting the other party. There are just so many ways for something to be misunderstood, or misinterpreted.

A few years ago, while I was representing my mother, of all people, the buyer's agent in the deal verbally presented a counter offer to me, which I verbally presented to my seller (mom), who verbally countered to the buyer's counter, which I verbally passed back to the buyer's agent, who would have verbally passed things on to her client. I can't imagine how anything could possibly get screwed up in that process.

You guessed it: When we typed it up, my mom says, "Keith, I didn't agree to that."

"But, mom, you did." She said she didn't. She was the client, so she didn't. Lesson learned.

In this case, the difference of opinion (there's your problem, right there) involved a few hundred bucks, and the other agent and I just split the difference and took care of it ourselves. But, in the meantime, as I said, lesson learned. It could have been terribly, terribly painful.

Let's be honest. All this verbal business usually (I didn't say "always") comes down to laziness on the part of a Realtor, who doesn't feel like driving across town to get an initial, or may not want to go back to the office to send or pick up a fax.

Like an old sales manager once told me, though, "The problem is not making mistakes. We all do that. The problem is repeating them."

Now, please, repeat after me -- NO VERBAL AGREEMENTS!!

A good friend offered to buy lunch today. Considering my comical financial situation, who am I to say no?

Andy is a very good friend, but he started out as a client. He is a 71-year-old former Marine who originally hailed from the midwest.

So why does he remind me of my 5-year-old daughter, who was born in China?

It was in November 2004, when Andy's wife, Nancy, called me. We had never met. She found me on the Internet. She said they were considering a move from Atlanta to Beaufort, and wondered if I might be available to show them property.

"Of course," I would have certainly said. "When are you planning to come?"

"Tomorrow," she answered, much to my, ahem, surprise.

What Nancy and Andy would not have known was that my wife, Jennifer, and I had returned the day before from China. We had brought our daughter, Grace, home with us. Vacations and trips tend to be tiring affairs, but this was far and away the most exhausting trip we had ever taken. And we were jet-lagged, to boot.

After Andy and Nancy found out about our trip, and Grace, they naturally wanted to hear all about it. On subsequent trips, they would ask how Grace was doing.

A few weeks after move-in, they invited us and the builder for dinner at their new house. Because Grace was still very much out of sorts in her new surroundings, we brought her along.

You can imagine the association I now make between my daughter Grace, and Andy and Nancy. They all came into my life within days of each other, during an exhausting but exhilarating November four years ago.

They attend the same church, and live just down the road from each other.

Even today, when I see Andy and Nancy, it's impossible not to think of my little girl, Grace. On at least a half dozen occasions I have heard Andy and Nancy cheerfully recall that first phone call, the day after we brought our daughter home. I have told the story countless times myself. It never grows old.

I can now measure my friendship with Andy and Nancy through my daughter, Grace, who was a petrified 15-month-old when she first came home.

So don't think it strange when I look into the eyes of a 71-year-old former Marine and see my 5-year-old daughter.

Amy Le of Chicago posted a fine blog about Realtor dos and don'ts.

Although it was not the thrust of her blog, she mentioned a recent experience at an open house, where the host agent talked on the phone the ENTIRE time Amy and her client were in the home.

Technology is absolutely trashing America's sense of decorum and manners. I'll sit at sales meetings, and look over at agents fiddling with their Blackberries, oblivious to the ongoing discussions. I've seen agents, in recent years, surfing the net during meetings.

I've been at small meetings at which one of the participants sat there and checked stock reports on the computer, his eyes darting back and forth between the screen and the other participants around the conference table.

Some people might call it multi-tasking, but, I'm sorry, folks, it's just PLAIN JUST RUDE.

Our culture is changing.

In technology-based, fast-driving, instant-gratification America, we seem to be conditioning ourselves to always have to be doing something that is electronically oriented. The art of enjoying someone's company with simple, unobstructed conversation is dying a slow death.

Not long ago, a lender friend visited me at an open house, and we had a nice, lengthy conversation. Towards the end of the discussion, I realized I COULD NOT REMEMBER the last time I had JUST TALKED with someone in a quiet room -- no cell phone distractions, no Blackberry fiddling, and no televisions pulling our eyes and attention away from the conversation. I've got to say it was very refreshing.

About three weeks ago, my 10-year-old daughter, Kitty, asked me to quiz her on her vocabulary words. As she thought through her first word, I reached over and grabbed my Apple laptop, and flipped it on.

But I asked myself as I did, "Am I incapable of giving my daughter 10 minutes of undivided attention?"

I put down the computer. It felt very good, and I think Kitty was probably appreciative that her dad was not half-heartedly helping her with her schoolwork.

Sometimes, while showing property, an empty house can really speak to me.

I am probably more prone to nostalgia than most, but I confess to pangs of sadness when coming across those tell-tale signs of days gone by. Maybe it's a forgotten, left-behind toy in the back yard, or a teenager's beaded closet door in an empty room, or the god-awful purple shag carpet that at one time lit up a young girl's face.

These items often tell us that, not only have mom and dad and the kids left the house, they have moved on from a special time in their lives.

I have six kids, ages 13 and under, and I am painfully aware that there will be a day when my wife, Jennifer, and I downsize. Maybe we will overlook a dirty, half-buried toy truck in the corner of the yard. Maybe a buyer's agent, or the next owner, will discover this forgotten, neglected toy which at one time served as the focal point of a young child's life.

With another Christmas looming, I think back to my own children's history, beginning the day my wife met me in an Atlanta parking lot 14 years ago, handed me a bib, and told with a huge smile that we were expecting.

I am also reminded, though, that ours is a PERSONAL, UNIQUE AND VERY, VERY IMPORTANT PROFESSION. We get glimpses into people's lives that other professions don't. Clients turn to us amidst death or divorce, or maybe because the last of the children is off to college.

We are home sellers, but we are so much more. We are friends and professionals in time of need. A HOUSE ONCE TOLD ME THAT.

Sixteenth Century English statesman THOMAS MORE said that searching for errors in the Tyndale King James Bible was like searching for water in the ocean. I would imagine it's much easier to find errors on the Internet. Blogging is said to be the ultimate form of democracy. Everybody gets a chance to be heard.

And that's the problem.

Remember the old saying, "It must be true, because I read it in the newspaper." Well, it applies to blogging and Internet sites, which -- regardless of accuracy -- become reference points. People take stuff on the Internet as gospel.

Maybe I'm an old journalism curmudgeon, but at least the newspaper has a process, before something makes it into print. You didn't just walk into the newsroom, tap out a story, and then walk out, assured the piece would make it to print.

We really have an immense responsibility to not only fact-check, but to also make sure things are put into their proper perspective. An accurate fact with no perspective is misleading at best, and might as well be wrong, as far as I'm concerned.

Take a blog I came across today, which stated in it's title that sales were down in the Beaufort market by 50 percent. Closer scrutiny revealed that the big drop was for a single month, not a year, or even a quarter.

We can create interesting and accurate blogs, if we just take a little extra time, and appreciate the responsibility we have, especially on a heavily-visited site like ACTIVE RAIN.