What can I say, at the end of August, I was so excited and thrilled to have multiple buyers in my pipeline. I closed one family at the end of October, but unfortunately, I just lost the second family a few days ago.

Sure, from the get go, it was a doubtful and challenging scenario with the hubby and wife currently living four hours apart, both being out of town with limited availability to scout out homes during the week, and ultimately with the wife calling all the shots all while communicating SOLELY through her hubby. In retrospect, maybe the multiple red flags should have tipped me off, but honestly, I was just so dang happy to get them signed on to work with me, and I was so determined and perhaps naively optimistic that I would find them the right house.

Remember that family to whom I showed over 30 houses a year or so ago? Fuck that. 30 homes was nothing. For this latest family, they covered a geographic region from San Jose to 90 minutes south in north Salinas. Yes, all of it was possible— they could live in ALL those places, they insisted. So, I scouted out probably 70 homes on their behalf in the three months of working together.

Last Saturday, while I was away at a conference, the wife texted through the search platform the oddest message and then she went on and on about really loving a house that just came on the market. Being as this wasn’t my first rodeo, I told her let’s see how the hubby reports back when he checks it out. Also, let’s wait for the disclosures. Immediately after the hubby saw it during the open house, they had me trying to prep for an offer. On Monday, as soon as I returned to town, I made arrangements to meet the list agent and tour the house and run comps. On Tuesdays, the disclosures were released. My clients reviewed and then late Tuesday, the hubby called me to say they were not only passing on the house but also passing on me.

The explanation was that the wife was burned out (SHE’S burned out from conducting the search strictly behind her computer monitor from the comfort of her own home?!?!), she wanted to take a break, and then they wanted to use another agent “to get new perspective.” Yup, just like that. Three months of hardcore work up in smoke. I will earn zippo on that whole project.

To be honest, I was stunned. I had been pulling/reviewing disclosures, contacting list agents, building rapport, running comps, talking to their lender, checking stats/inventory on THREE different markets, so much fucking work for nothing. I cried so much that night. And then the next day, all day I was sobbing on and off. Yet another asshole out there viewing real estate agents like a goddamn commodity. You just swap them in and out. No respect. I barely even got a thank you out of the hubby, and absolutely zero acknowledgement or comment from the wife. What absolute dickwads.

Thankfully, during the three day conference, I had already decided to sign on to the coaching program. My goals through the program are to build my skillset, implement an organized and integrated system marketing/tracking system, and generate a plethora of leads so that I am better positioned to be selective about clients. Moving forward, clients have to be 1. motivated 2. qualified to buy 3. nice. You have no idea how difficult it is to find people who meet just those three basic criteria.

It’s an interesting lesson for me. The whole time, John was telling me I was spending too much time on these people. Their (her) criteria was constantly evolving. First, we started out looking for homes with granny units or enough space to build an ADU. They had zero understanding about the regs surrounding ADUs. I educated them and pointed them to resources. Then, the ADU requirement went away and there were suddenly other criteria. It was a whole laundry list and yet, I found homes to check off everything. Then the demands changed again. Each time, I asked questions to better understand their needs. John told me to scale back and stop asking questions. You’re wanting to find patterns and apply logic to what they want. It defies logic. You can’t work with crazy. But I was so determined…

A few months ago, my 83-year old seller (for whom I worked out a solution with the local housing agencies) told me “you’re very optimistic.” I thought it was the strangest compliment, bc if anything, I consider myself a realist/pessimist. But now I see what she meant. No matter how unreasonable my clients were, I just doubled down and worked harder. For whatever reason, I convinced myself that we were closer to closing on a home than not. And boy was I wrong. Boy did I misread. As Bubbey and my friends told me, she was never going to buy. I didn’t believe them. After all, we had written two offers before… they were serious. That was my proof. But I suppose, the ultimate proof will be in the pudding. That family that viewed 30 homes? I looked them up in public records about 1.5 years after we’d met. They still hadn’t purchased a home. We’ll see if that’ the case too with this family.

As fate would have it… a few days before they cut me loose, I had a memorable conversation with their lender. I told him how I had seen so many homes on their behalf. He said he’d known them a long time and during that time they had worked with many agents and professionals. The consensus was that no one ever communicated with the wife, yet she was the only decision maker. And the hubby was always the messenger. They’d run through multiple agents and be in and out of contract (red flag), and universally, people found them to be very difficult to work with. Honestly, I had underestimated a lot:

1. The hubby’s level of pain. When I first met him in August, he had already been searching for 8 months on his own. Scouring open houses an hour away from where he currently lived then driving eight hours every weekend to reunite with the wife and kid and return for work on Monday. I thought to myself… how long could this possibly go on? Apparently, this arrangement of living apart and driving an inordinate amount every week can go on forever. And now my realization is that she’s a saboteur— perhaps she doesn’t even want to live with him anymore!

2. The wife’s power. Being in a relationship where J and I are mostly balanced in discussing big decisions, it never really occurred to me that the hubby would be so damn spineless. My goodness, I showed him numerous homes that he LOVED and then as soon as she seemed lukewarm on the home, he’d suddenly call out a bunch of things he didn’t like about the home he had previously LOVED.

3. I can’t work with crazy. The whole time, I kept studying the homes they saved or liked, looking for patterns or common characteristics. I’d ask for feedback so that I could fine tune or improve my search parameters… In the end, J was so frustrated with me. He said I kept trying to get clarification to better understand but their decision making was not based on logic. You just can’t work with decision makers who decide based on emotion. It’s too much based on whim.

Well, no matter how you report on the autopsy, it’s a shitty deal. It really hurt my feelings and hurt my confidence. And now I’m at the end of November and the deal I was hoping to close by year end is gone. And I don’t even want to think about the high opportunity cost I paid for this very undeserving and ungrateful family.