Sellers Beings Are Emotional, Too

Important and too often overlooked is the emotional connection. Sellers sell on emotion, just as buyers buy on emotion. So meet the sellers if possible when you go through a second time. Don’t gush and tell them they have the loveliest home in the world . . . that you can’t live without it. You don’t want to come across as too eager and compromise your offer. You just want them to see you as real people—as someone they would like to see live in their home and take care of it the way they did.
In a hot market where you’ve got competing offers, you might write a letter to the sellers and attach it to the offer. Ryan and Susan did this when they presented an offer on an upscale home in a neighborhood where few listings come on the market. There were three competing offers, and their agent wasn’t optimistic about their chances.
Susan decided to write a letter to the buyer expressing how they felt about the home and neighborhood. The feeling was that they had nothing to lose, so why not give it try. The two-page letter explained how they wanted their twin girls to go the nearby elementary and how much they liked the home and the effort the sellers had put into decorating and maintaining the home. Their agent thought this was a little weird, but then orders are orders, and he clipped it to the offer paperwork.
That evening Susan and Ryan’s agent presented the offer to the Allbrights and their listing agent. It was the fourth offer and pretty much the same as the other three in price and terms. When the sellers read the attached letter, they looked each other and didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then Mrs. Allbright looked over at their agent and told her, ‘‘These are the people we want to live in our home . . . this is the offer we’re accepting.’’ The sellers were schoolteachers, and they identified with the buyers through their letter and felt they were the right people for their home.
This approach may not work all the time, but it’s important to note that making a connection with the sellers on a personal level can’t hurt. Agents too often get caught up in the nuts and bolts of real estate and forget that it’s the human touch that frequently makes deals.