I get frustrated sometimes being a woman. As you know, my family has a townhouse back East that’s currently on the market. The agent with whom I’m working was recommended by the previous agent J and I used to sell our first home in Virginia. Anyway, so far the process with this new agent was working out well: on his suggestion, we put in about $10k in renovations prior to putting the property on the market. He’s been very good about driving and staying on schedule. Long story short, we received two offers on the house in less than ten days. The good news is that the house seems priced right enough to solicit offers. The bad news is that the offers feel low.

I mean, I’m not a realtor but at the same time, I’m no stranger to data nor is my family a stranger to real estate. There are so many online tools now for you to see comp properties and figure out market prices. My point is, even though my father and I have access to “experts,” we don’t just follow them blindly. That has never been our style. Even with the Houseboat, I had a realtor whom I trusted THE MOST out of all realtors I’ve dealt with, and I STILL backed up her recs with my own independent research.

Back to the offers: they felt seriously lowball, like $10-15k off after factoring in their request for buyer credits at settlement. I understand that real estate transactions are all about negotiations, and I’m fine to negotiate but I still want a price that I feel is fair. I won’t go into all the numeric details, but for the second offer, we countered twice and ultimately, it came down to $2k. And my agent basically pressured me to take it, based on his predictions for the market and the type of interested buyers we were getting. I had consulted with my father and with J. I decided to hold firm and let the buyers walk away.

The conversation with my agent bugged me though, bc I really felt like he scoffed at my decision. Like when I said I wanted to hold firm, partly bc the offer is too low and partly bc the property has ONLY been on the market for a week, I swear I heard him laugh in disbelief. He kept saying that it was ultimately my decision (yes, I know!), but his response felt really unsupportive. The thing is, my position is the same as my father’s, so I really wonder how the agent’s response might have differed had the decision been verbalized/relayed by my father. J says it’s not necessarily a gender thing, that maybe it was bc I had wavered, like my voice/tone allowed for the possibility of coming down more… Perhaps. And at the same time, the point of experts is for them to share their honest opinions so I certainly don’t want to fault him for his frankness…

That said, I’m trying to be more business savvy. Like J always warns me to look for the other party’s angle and what’s in it for them. For example, all my real estate books say that the agent has fiduciary responsibility to the client, meaning the client’s financial interests are supposed to be above the agent’s. But that’s textbook, and this is real life. As J pointed out, the agent gets the same commission whether he hustles to sell our property at that price in eight days or in one month. Of course, for him, the faster the better so he can move on to selling others. In the end, I explained my position to the agent as this: the house just went on the market. I’m willing to come down, but not that much right now. Maybe after a few weeks, we’ll end up lowering the price anyway. Maybe not. Maybe we’ll get a better offer. I’m willing to take the risk by holding on a while longer.

Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable exchange, and I felt somewhat bullied. And then all that night, I kept replaying that shit over and over in my head. I imagined John or my father delivering the same decision, and I’m certain they would not BELABOR the conversation in their heads afterwards. Is it a confidence thing? Was it a mansplaining thing? Is it me? Is it woman vs. man? Is it my fear of being wrong?

The whole scenario is an interesting experience bc as much as I believe that I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime, there are still so many pockets of naivety and inexperience. I always strive to be more street smart and more business savvy. But I guess those are things that only come through wider exposure. So all I can do is just keep learning. Hopefully, with more experience, I can be faster and surer in my decision-making.