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Is the old saying Don't mix business with family an accurate saying ?
I helped my best friend of 10 years buy a house last year and I feel like our friendship sort of soured.
It started when she was having issues with the loan officer because she got his number from me,to anything about how much commission I am making has become a cause of akward conversation between us.
She is now resentful that the house next door to her listed for 40% less recently.
currently, I have 3 people that I am working with and two of them are friends.
I am sure I will encounter some family members in the future who want to buy or sell and I am not sure if it is best to refer or take the business.
Is the old saying Don't mix business with family an accurate saying ?
I helped my best friend of 10 years buy a house last year and I feel like our friendship sort of soured.
It started when she was having issues with the loan officer because she got his number from me,to anything about how much commission I am making has become a cause of akward conversation between us.
She is now resentful that the house next door to her listed for 40% less recently.
currently, I have 3 people that I am working with and two of them are friends.
I am sure I will encounter some family members in the future who want to buy or sell and I am not sure if it is best to refer or take the business.
What is your input? or experience on this if any?
It's one of the lessons you learn when you get into the r/e business. They will (a) think you are interfering, (b) think you are making money "off them", and on and on. You cannot point out the pitfalls, they will think you are "jealous". Duh???
After I took my own sister and her hubby around years ago (when I was a newbie and didn't know better), probably for 3 weekends and nights in a row, they went to an open house about 40 miles from where they said they wanted to be ...and bought a house! Yep ... w/o me. They overpaid for a shotgun ranch on a small lot with no basement, on a slab, in New England yet. Had nothing but problems with the house, the builder went belly up and when the pipes froze under the slab in the winter, they had to have the whole thing torn up. The eventually sold the house due to a relocation and lost money.
15 years later, she asked me what to do in the new area (CA), because the company only gave them 4 days to look for a house. I told her to rent! No.... Mr. and Mrs. Know It All bought a house, took a jumbo mtg., and he lost his job 8 mos. later. Bottom line: foreclosure.
Working with relatives and friends? no way, it's the kiss of death. Send them out on a referral, and spend your quality time at work with the general public. (If there are examples out there of this working out well, it is rare indeed.)
It's one of the lessons you learn when you get into the r/e business. They will (a) think you are interfering, (b) think you are making money "off them", and on and on. You cannot point out the pitfalls, they will think you are "jealous". Duh???
After I took my own sister and her hubby around years ago (when I was a newbie and didn't know better), probably for 3 weekends and nights in a row, they went to an open house about 40 miles from where they said they wanted to be ...and bought a house! Yep ... w/o me. They overpaid for a shotgun ranch on a small lot with no basement, on a slab, in New England yet. Had nothing but problems with the house, the builder went belly up and when the pipes froze under the slab in the winter, they had to have the whole thing torn up. The eventually sold the house due to a relocation and lost money.
15 years later, she asked me what to do in the new area (CA), because the company only gave them 4 days to look for a house. I told her to rent! No.... Mr. and Mrs. Know It All bought a house, took a jumbo mtg., and he lost his job 8 mos. later. Bottom line: foreclosure.
Working with relatives and friends? no way, it's the kiss of death. Send them out on a referral, and spend your quality time at work with the general public. (If there are examples out there of this working out well, it is rare indeed.)
LOL...My brother did the same thing to me that your sister and her brother did to you!
He OVERPAID, thought he was saving thousands and then when he tried to sell it, years later, lost tons of money. Because of the strange location, it also took him 3 years to sell!
I have had better luck with friends. When your friends are buying, seems to work out better. Selling in this market is tough so not sure I'd want to work with ANY of my friends! I'd most likely refer those.
I had a buyer who was determined to use her best friend of 15 years, as her lender. Lender/best friend lived in another town. Lender/best friend screwed up her mortgage a week before closing. We ended up having to close about 2 weeks later, buyer lost her "lock in rate", and ended up having to pay more in closing costs. It was not pretty. I told her NOT to hold her friend/lender responsbile even though it WAS lender's fault for missing some key items. It is a shame to lose a 15 year friendship over a loan.
It's one of the lessons you learn when you get into the r/e business. They will (a) think you are interfering, (b) think you are making money "off them", and on and on. You cannot point out the pitfalls, they will think you are "jealous". Duh???
After I took my own sister and her hubby around years ago (when I was a newbie and didn't know better), probably for 3 weekends and nights in a row, they went to an open house about 40 miles from where they said they wanted to be ...and bought a house! Yep ... w/o me. They overpaid for a shotgun ranch on a small lot with no basement, on a slab, in New England yet. Had nothing but problems with the house, the builder went belly up and when the pipes froze under the slab in the winter, they had to have the whole thing torn up. The eventually sold the house due to a relocation and lost money.
15 years later, she asked me what to do in the new area (CA), because the company only gave them 4 days to look for a house. I told her to rent! No.... Mr. and Mrs. Know It All bought a house, took a jumbo mtg., and he lost his job 8 mos. later. Bottom line: foreclosure.
Working with relatives and friends? no way, it's the kiss of death. Send them out on a referral, and spend your quality time at work with the general public. (If there are examples out there of this working out well, it is rare indeed.)
I'm sorry your experiences were so bad and you weren't treated fairly, but I still don't agree with you and think that relatives should call me and it hurt my feelings the one time a niece didn't.
What problems have come up hasn't made me want to quit serving friends and family. In most cases things go fine and I won't let the occasional dumb bunny discourage me. Besides, this is a word of mouth business. If you eliminate family and friends it eliminates a lot of people. I also think it may even tick someone off someday if you say you won't help them. They might take it personally.
LOL...My brother did the same thing to me that your sister and her brother did to you!
He OVERPAID, thought he was saving thousands and then when he tried to sell it, years later, lost tons of money. Because of the strange location, it also took him 3 years to sell!
I have had better luck with friends. When your friends are buying, seems to work out better. Selling in this market is tough so not sure I'd want to work with ANY of my friends! I'd most likely refer those.
I had a buyer who was determined to use her best friend of 15 years, as her lender. Lender/best friend lived in another town. Lender/best friend screwed up her mortgage a week before closing. We ended up having to close about 2 weeks later, buyer lost her "lock in rate", and ended up having to pay more in closing costs. It was not pretty. I told her NOT to hold her friend/lender responsbile even though it WAS lender's fault for missing some key items. It is a shame to lose a 15 year friendship over a loan.
Location: Mokelumne Hill, CA & El Pescadero, BCS MX.
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My daughter and her husband gave me a call asking about buying property at a tax sale auction in CA. I assembled all the documentation about the properties they were interested in bidding on from a distance and they were unsuccessful at winning any of the bids.
I told my daughter that if she really wanted to buy something in the Santa Cruz area, I would be more than happy to recommend someone to her that I've done business with. At best I would maybe ask for a referral from another agent, but even then I think I'd rather wish them the best and let another professional handle it.
Friends on the other hand, are a different story. In a small town like ours, I know probably half the population on a first name basis so I have no problems dealing with them or their friends.
Is the old saying Don't mix business with family an accurate saying ?
I helped my best friend of 10 years buy a house last year and I feel like our friendship sort of soured.
It started when she was having issues with the loan officer because she got his number from me,to anything about how much commission I am making has become a cause of akward conversation between us.
She is now resentful that the house next door to her listed for 40% less recently.
currently, I have 3 people that I am working with and two of them are friends.
I am sure I will encounter some family members in the future who want to buy or sell and I am not sure if it is best to refer or take the business.
What is your input? or experience on this if any?
I don't have any stories quite like that but I've worked with a few friends and I find it much more difficult to work with friends or family. I have mixed opinions on it. I feel like I'm the best person for the job but it's not fun for me because of the pressure. I've considered just referring it out but can't bring myself to do it.
Well here's what happened when I represented my girlfriend.
Quote:
I received my real estate license a year ago and have since mainly worked rentals. My girlfriend decided she wanted to purchase a home and use me as her realtor making my first sale client if you will.
We searched and searched around the Baltimore area and every time she found a place she liked, it went under contract.
Finally we found one that had been on the market for 10 months that she loved. She gave me the go ahead and I negotiated $12000 off the list price and half of her closing costs paid by the seller. Everything was going very smoothly and appraisal and the inspection went by just fine.
We agreed to settle 5 weeks after the offer was signed. More than ample time as she had financing secured with our in house lender.
Well unfortunately, the * hit the fan in the last week. We were supposed to close last Friday but for the past two weeks, the bank has been asking for more and more paperwork or things edited on an almost daily basis.
Needless to say, the loan was still in underwriting when we were supposed to close. My girlfriend became an emotional wreck and really made things awkward, threatening to call Wells Fargo and demand answers. I thought I had successfully calmed her down but she also works for a real estate company and had their in house lawyers call and ream out our lender and half ream me out over the phone for not being on top of all this. I would hate to see her in divorce court. I've tried explaining that everyone involved is on her side as no one gets paid until it closes.
Her family got involved, she was livid, basically not a good situation all around. In my opinion, as I explained to them- I realize that in this transaction I'm the figure head of it and if things are going to go bad, it will probably be my head on a stick. As I think though, everything on the sales side went as smoothly as possible. I can't possibly be held accountable because it is caught up in underwriting. The bank being closed yesterday didn't help much.
In effect I'm getting thrown under the bus for some guy who let documents sit on his desk. I think they've settled down and the seller is bending over backwards to make this work but it's really not a fun situation to be in for the first transaction.
I think I diffused everything pretty well but I'm preparing for the backlash if we can't close this week. 60% of what was supposed to close in our office on Friday was delayed so we're not the only ones.
Did I handle this correctly? Obviously things are different with the relationship tied into it. I was going to give her the commission to but she just exploded on me, I wasn't ready for it.
If anything I'm more irritated she went behind my back to get answers.
It's really aggravating to be frank. I've moved in with her and I swear every time something goes wrong in the house, she gives me the 'look' when in fact these things are not my fault. A waterline popped off the other day on the second floor and flooded the kitchen cabs and eventually led to 5 inches of water in the basement. The fire dept had to come out and shut the water off because we were both at work. Fortunately I had a couple cards laying around and that is how they contacted me. Two hours of shoveling out water with a bucket was a great way to spend an afternoon as well as the 5 days of air dryers running in the house to dry the walls out.
Ironically she pays extra for sump pump insurance but doesn't have a sump pump.
It's really aggravating to be frank. I've moved in with her and I swear every time something goes wrong in the house, she gives me the 'look' when in fact these things are not my fault. A waterline popped off the other day on the second floor and flooded the kitchen cabs and eventually led to 5 inches of water in the basement. The fire dept had to come out and shut the water off because we were both at work. Fortunately I had a couple cards laying around and that is how they contacted me. Two hours of shoveling out water with a bucket was a great way to spend an afternoon as well as the 5 days of air dryers running in the house to dry the walls out.
Ironically she pays extra for sump pump insurance but doesn't have a sump pump.
Dave, don't despair ! you might just have a new listing coming up.
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