Monday Morning Match is a simple post – maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea – intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.
Rarely is anything easy the first time…and if it is easy for you, then it’s most likely easy for everyone. As the old saying goes, “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Sometimes you just don’t understand how something works. It might be a tool, product, service, piece of technology or a video game.
I understand I might be dating myself here, but remember the first time you played a video game like Pac Man or Space Invaders? I’m guessing you didn’t get your name on the High Score chart after dropping your first quarter into the machine in your local arcade or pizza shop. It usually took you a few games to even get past the first level but before you knew it, you were almost playing the game at such a high level, you could make a dollar’s worth of quarters last an hour. You memorized patterns to advance to the next level, you discovered how to get bonus levels or add points to your score and sometimes earned so many free lives that getting your name on the High Score chart was not only a given, you sometimes had the first two or three spots.
Driving a car or driving a golf ball both take tons of patience and practice and it helps if you have an understanding and determined coach teaching you how to do it. Yet most of you reading this have a driver’s license within arms reach and if I invited you to join me for a round of golf this weekend or booked a happy hour at the local Top Golf, my guess is you’d be joining me. It wasn’t easy when you first started learning but you didn’t let that stop you. You kept trying.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try
Like many markets around the country, inventory is in high demand and often we are competing in multiple offer situations. “Highest and Best” is a statement heard all too often by today’s buyers and their Realtor representatives as Sellers aim to maximize their net proceeds in the crazy bidding wars we are experiencing. The buyers that “win” a multiple offer situation (if you can call oftentimes paying above asking price with little to no terms to protect their interests “winning”?) are thrilled and often relieved that the challenge of finding the right house and battling with other buyers is potentially over. Sadly, every time there are multiple offers, that means someone loses as well. I heard of a house selling a few weeks ago here in town that had 14 offers on the table. That means 13 buyers that wanted the house enough to submit an offer in writing, hoping to be the next owner, were disappointed to find out their offer wasn’t the highest or the best. So what are they to do? Get back to the search and try again.
Last week I showed a bunch of houses to a couple who is moving into town. We saw some beautiful houses that lacked the desired feature or two off of their “wants and needs list” and we also saw a few that were an immediate “no thanks.” When we finally found “the one,” we did some preliminary research and submitted an offer. The next day, we got the notification that it was now a multiple offer situation as someone else also wanted the house. My clients and I discussed the options and they decided to revise their offer. We submitted our new offer and optimistically hoped for good news but with houses seemingly “flying off the shelves” all around town, we started working on “Plan B” for other homes to see.
When we got the email from the listing agent that the Sellers didn’t accept our offer, we were disappointed as you might expect. There was, however, a small glimmer of hope still before we needed to enact Plan B and start setting up more showings. You see, the Sellers didn’t accept the other offer either, instead deciding to “test the market” a little longer as showing activity was strong and the Sellers weren’t in as much of a hurry to sell like some other people with homes currently listed for sale.
Failure doesn’t mean the game is over, it means try again with experience
As the home wasn’t under contract with someone else, I asked my clients if they had “won” the multiple offer situation if they would have been happy. “Yes” was their obvious response. “So why don’t we try again? What if we submitted a new offer? Now that you know what the disappointment feels like when you DON’T get the house, let’s try again and see if we can find out what it feels like when the Sellers say yes.”
As you can guess, we submitted a new offer that was a little higher and a little better and those small changes ended up making a big difference. The Sellers accepted our offer, my clients are as excited as can be, and Plan B will not be getting called up to the varsity squad. I know, I know; Just because we are “under contract” doesn’t mean the house is “sold” yet. There are still inspections, loan processing, appraisals, and underwriting hurdles to clear, but the good news is the biggest hurdle was possibly already cleared when we decided to try again. Now we are in the race and headed down the track. I guess we’ll just keep trying to put one foot in front of the other and jump when we have to.
Good luck this week. Try to build relationships, solve problems, and have fun.
