Should an agent ever say, "Don't buy this house"?
"I really appreciated it when you'd tell me, 'Don't buy this house'", my client said over dinner at a really expensive Japanese restaurant one night a few years ago as we celebrated (on his nickel, so don't get any ideas) the purchase of his home.
I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped, because I never told him, "Don't buy this house". I did mention the cons, as well as pros, of each house we saw, and trusted him to make the right decision based on his needs. And he did, or at least that's what he told me a year or so later over dinner at his house. Will it meet his needs in five, ten or twenty years? Maybe yes, maybe no, because needs change over a lifetime, but the important thing is that he made the right decision for his situation in 2007—with my assistance and input, of course, but without me making it all about me.
In other words, he bought the house he thought he needed, not the house I needed him to need.
Last week I questioned the idea that a qualified, motivated home buyer could ever be clueless enough to need an agent (or self-appointed expert) save her from herself by staging a home-buying intervention. You'll find this "caring intervention" thinking among elitists, the random drama queen/agent, and skeptics who've never felt the urge to own their own home and can't understand why any right-thinking individual would.
But I'll admit that saying that home buyers can, should and must make their own decisions, albeit with discrete guidance, makes me sound so whatever. Shouldn't I be throwing myself in front of any bullets the big bad market shoots at my clients?
Sure, as long as it shoots real bullets and not blanks. I'll explain.
Back when I was a new agent, I got one of my first clients a great deal on a fixer. Not every fixer is a great deal, but my client was handy and willing and had lots of handy willing friends. The house worked out so well that my client asked me to find him another. Not only that, he brought in two friends as partners, perhaps the ultimate sign of confidence in me, and definitely two more satisfied home buyers to spread the good word and help me establish my career.
I found them a fixer in their price range, not easy even in 1999, but when I read the disclosures I saw that the house had $30k in termite damage, a lot for any house but especially one with a market value of $150k. And my clients weren't known for their deep pockets. So when we met to write the offer I soberly told them that this house might be more than they could handle. After a few minutes of earnest discussion, they agreed and left the office...not looking real happy, I noticed, but I was feeling too virtuous to worry. I knew I'd done the right thing, I knew they knew, and I knew that the experience had bonded us like nothing else.
I was a sure-enough hero. Even better—excuse me, almost as good—being a sure-enough hero was Good Business! And, sure enough, a few weeks later they bought a house.
Using another agent.
At about this time home prices began rising like the Red River of the North in a spring thaw, and in the east-of-101 neighborhood where this $150k house was located prices kept rising, even during the otherwise down days of dot-bust, and a few years later the house I'd persuaded them was too risky at $150k was worth twice that, and their cheap labor would've made it worth even more, and prices kept rising and the house was worth three times $150k, and then four times, and then the east-of-101 market collapsed like a Red River levee and the house was worth $150k.
An ultimately dire outcome that proves nothing, because they could have flipped the house at the market's peak for a big profit. Or hung on and refinanced the house to within an inch of its life and ended up losing it and their shirts. Or parlayed the house into the free-and-clear ownership of a highly lucrative self-storage facility in Turlock, California.
In other words, that night I didn't know how the house would turn out for my clients. No one did, and no one ever does.
Which is why no one should act like they do.