Please say hi to Madhuri for me. Some day she’ll find a home that she likes more than the one she has, but it’s a tough one to beat

I agree 100% with you. You are looking for the final satisfaction 5 years later for the client and very rarely find in people who make it a business decission to sell the house take the comm and move on to next.

I think Madhuri has accepted that we have a lovely house, that extra 15 mins does not bother her much(since we car pool so much due to gas prices, I end up driving mostly)

I love that dress analogy. I do it so many times with my laptop. I go out to get a new one, look at specs and the price and then come back saying that my old one is good enough )

- srini

The worst thing you can do “for” a client is disrupt their lives unnecessarily. For some it is easy to elevate the quality of life for a client. That’s really what it’s about. Not trading in one “asset” for a different “asset”.

Truth is…with all the “inventory” people talk about, we didn’t see any homes that replicated the home and lifestyle that your wife really likes right now where she is right now. Moving closer in on a fairly lateral basis is a “concept” that often has too many tradeoffs. When people are faced with driving an extra 15 minutes and trading down in housing to accomplish that…those extra 15 minutes don’t seem so long anymore.

So in a way, the process makes you happier even if you don’t move. Sometimes people stop worrying so much about those extra 15 minutes.

All agents learn the circle of “Probe, Evaluate, Close”, well maybe they don’t. But even those who do don’t learn that “close” means a good ending for the client, and that good ending isn’t always a commissioned sale.

Sometimes when you go out to buy a new dress, you go home without one. You realize that one of the ones you have in your closet fits better, and looks better on you, than any for sale in the store. Then you feel better in that same old dress than you did before you went out shopping for a new one

I agree that home prices are very high compared to median income and what people have saved. I feel this market will still feel the pinch as we start seeing the effects from any layoff’s from microsoft(they will come) and other startup’s starts shutting down.

I feel home prices will fall to 2004 levels.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27122927/

“We really looked at what can the first-time buyer afford based on the median income for those markets and that’s kind of how we designed our house to meet that price point that would attract those buyers,”

I agree that is what will happen.

If buyers thought they were getting that advice but really were getting a dishonest sales pitch, on both the national level and sometimes the individual level, they would end up buying more and paying more for it, and not just the commission.

One of the things Redfin trumpets is that their agents are paid bonuses based on customer satisfaction, rather than commission, so individually they aren’t motivated to get you to buy a big place. Its a start.

What buyers really want is someone to help them figure out if they are making good choices. Most will trade a relatively small savings in commission for best advices, hands down.

When the best choice is to buy nothing at all…it is a very difficult advice for an agent to give. Maybe that kind of advice should come from Mom and Dad That’s why I always try to identify with my clients and treat them like I would family. Some say “it’s business”, but in my experience, the very best advices have to include a large element of caring about the people.

I’d say it’s been about 50/50 in the last 12 months. It’s a better time to sell than to buy and about half of my clients I told to rent and the other half I helped make good choicesin buying. All in all that’s still a 75% drop in my income. That kind of integrity is heavy load to carry. I don’t think we can expect a whole industry to do that.