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With competition fierce this spring, real estate agents were tested as they tried to help their clients – especially buyers – navigate the market.
When Casey Gruttadauria got married two years ago, he and his wife moved into his 800-square-foot condominium in Medford – with all their wedding gifts. Suddenly, the place seemed far too small.
“We still haven’t even been able to open our wedding gifts because there’s no place for anything,” he said.
As housing prices climbed last May, the couple decided to sell. Two weeks later, it had. But as their search for a single-family home continued month after month, frustration and stress overtook their seller’s triumph.
Ten months and seven offers later, Gruttadauria, who is 35, and his wife bought a home in Andover. As they awaited their Aug. 1 closing, they rented a neighbor’s condo for six weeks, staging it and then leaving every weekend. That property, too, was for sale until the owner pulled it off the market.
Gruttadauria’s wait is almost over, but the situation hasn’t been mentally healthy, he said.
Buyers Challenged to Adapt to Tech
The residential housing market remains strong in Massachusetts after more than a year in unprecedented seller’s territory. Buying a house right now takes incredible patience, acumen and buying power, while selling invites equity questions for homeowners committed to fairness. Amid such intensity, how do real estate agents improve, or aggravate, today’s home-buying process for their clients?
Arlington resident Wendy Page is an outlier. In February, she learned that fellow church members wanted to sell their condo. Page, who is 70, bought the place without anyone else even looking at it. Although the market favored her, selling her own condo, the upper two stories of a two-family home, felt daunting.
“It was a lifestyle sizing, but also an emotional and spiritual activity for me,” she said.
Her agent was supportive and available as Page talked about the emotion of her home transition. That was crucial. She also updated Page on how technology had changed the homebuying – Page bought her old condo in the late 1990s. She advised her to paint her ceilings and recommended available, affordable tradespeople for improvements.
“She really earned her keep in doing that kind of stuff,” Page said.
Ultimately, her home sold in four days for $120,000 above asking price.
“Blew. Me. Away,” Paige said.
When first-time homebuyer Ryan Moloney and his fiancée bought their home after bidding on about a dozen other homes and having an earlier offer accepted with conditions so restrictive they didn’t pursue the purchase. When the offer was accepted on their current home, “a lot of the conversations were very technology-driven,” said Moloney, who is 36. Not speaking directly with the sellers felt strange, and difficult.
“I didn’t feel like our agent was a good pipeline for our conversations,” he said.
He felt like he was in the dark throughout the home sale process.
“That led to some frustrations – but at the same time, I don’t know if that’s normal.”
Set Expectations Early
Anita Hill, who owns Anita Hill Training and Seminars, teaches licensing and continuing education courses for real estate agents. Right now, it’s particularly important for agents to set appropriate expectations with clients, she said, so they understand their agent’s role and responsibilities as well as the dynamics of an unrivaled seller’s market.
Hill also suggests that agents help buyers prepare thoroughly – considering details such as escalation clauses, appraisal gaps and maximum purchase price – before putting in an offer.
“In other words, they’ve met with a lender, they’ve reviewed the options, they know how much latitude if they’re in a competitive bid situation they can go,” she said.
Amid bidding wars and cash offers, the best agents remain honest and keep their clients’ interests paramount.
“They cannot get caught up in the game of negotiating to win, because that’s not always in the buyer’s best interest,” Hill said. “Don’t try to sell anybody just to make a sale, but tell the truth, because my biggest concern with this market is down the road, we may see some lawsuits.”
Buyer “love letters” concern her, too, as they did Page’s agent. When buying, Page wrote a letter to the sellers. By the time she listed her property, her agent was concerned about the practice’s potential to bias sellers. Page appreciated this; she knew her agent shared her values because of their shared faith background.
“We talked a lot about ethics,” she said, and maximizing fairness while selling.
Fierce Competition a Shock
For his part, Gruttadauria now knows that he and his wife didn’t fully understand the dynamics of the market last spring. He didn’t know that they would see about close to 150 homes in person and increase their budget by $200,000 before buying. They initially got advice from his father, who hadn’t bought a home in about 10 years.
“[Our Realtor, a childhood friend] was caught in a pretty tough position because he was trying to tell us the first couple of times that we liked a house, ‘How much do you like it? You should really think about being aggressive here if you love it,’” Gruttadauria said. “I think if he had been a little more direct at the beginning, we maybe would have gotten something earlier.”
That said, Gruttadauria noted that he and his wife just might not have been ready to offer what they needed to at the beginning of their search.
This hindsight reflection, though, was his only major complaint – he’s happy with how his agent represented and helped him through his home search and purchase. Their agent taught Gruttadauria and his wife how to rule out homes by looking at them online, to avoid open houses if possible. He was organized, and his offers were, too. When his agent told Gruttadauria that another seller had declined their offer, he was gentle.
“He kind of taught us how to talk about money with each other, too, because we had never really had a budget in such a crazy way, and in such a big way,” Gruttadauria said.
They hadn’t known how to communicate well about budgeting, and their Realtor became their guide.
“Ultimately we got a house we love, so it’s hard to be anything other than happy,” he said.
He just wishes he had known the forces working against them.
“We knew the real estate market was kinda hot,” he said. “We didn’t know what ‘hot’ meant.”
