It’s Not Just Us

It’s Labor Day. As I plan my return to the office after a week off, I am thinking about the enormous amount of invisible labor which goes into most of the deals we do. I am thinking of the skills which my top agents have painstakingly developed over many years practicing the business of residential real estate brokerage. And I am thinking about the front page article in this week’s New York Times Real Estate section, which catalogued the frustration and rage of the unsuccessful renter or buyer who then vents his bile on the real estate agent. That agent more often than not is innocent of the charge of callous indifference laid against him/her AND is working behind the scenes to obtain a different result.

Why is it that real estate brokers, who are bound by the same fiduciary duty as attorneys, receive such intense vilification when a deal fails to work out? We are not the ones making the final decision; we are bound to obey our client’s wishes, as long as they are legal, whether we agree with them or not. When, as in the case of the article mentioned above, a buyer or tenant has an offer accepted but is then knocked out of place by a higher offer, the fault is rarely that of the agent. On the contrary, most of us argue with our client, the seller, to stick with the deal which has already been made. Sometimes they listen, often they don’t. 

As in every profession, not all practitioners rise to the same standards. No doubt agents exist who do not always choose the high road, but they are not the norm. Most of us put our hearts and souls into our work, and feel justifiable pride in the positive outcomes which more often attend our efforts. But deals do fall apart. Owners do decide, after accepting one offer, to drop it and move on to another, usually one which will make them more money. We do not, by and large, live any longer in the world of the handshake. Over the years, my colleagues and I have come to accept this, whether or not we like it. But what truly still baffles me, even after all these years, is how we have ended up being thought sleazy or dishonest for carrying out our client’s wishes. What, I would ask those frustrated or rejected customers like the author of this week’s story in the Times, are we as agents to do? Disobey the instructions of our client? Tip them off when we have specifically been instructed otherwise? 

It is not only the seller’s agent who is blamed in these situations. The angry buyer will often turn on her own agent as well: “You didn’t do the best for me,” or “You should have known how this was going to turn out,” or “You just care about your commission.” While I won’t deny that we do care about our commissions (like most professionals, we prefer to get paid) it is almost never true that we care most about our compensation. As agents we agonize over the deals which go wrong, feeling both regret for our clients, with whom we have often become friendly and whose interests we are anxious to protect, and distress on our own behalf, that a transaction in our hands has misfired. Like any responsible professionals, we try to use every failed deal as a learning experience; we work to detect possible flaws in our approach so as to operate more skillfully the next time around.

Over the years I have been fortunate to develop wonderful relationships with clients who have recognized my expertise in what I do just as I recognize THEIR expertise in what they do. With some of these clients we have seen deals which should have worked fall apart, while other deals we never dreamed could work come to fruition. I have had a few experiences in which the lost deals were so painful for the principals that they no longer wished to deal with me; sometimes they blamed me for chains of events over which I had no control. As an agent, I continued to agonize over some of these lost relationships for years. Agents know the deep emotional commitment buyers and sellers have to their homes, so we understand, regretfully, when we bear the brunt of being held responsible for their lost dream, of either a purchase or a sale. Overall, however, the greatest satisfactions in this job result from the joyful interactions which surround the creation and completion of successful transactions. Mostly, our buyers and sellers end up happy. And when they’re happy, we’re happy.