What Do You Do to Reduce Homebuyers Stress?

Buying and selling homes is something that you, as a real estate agent, do all the time. You know how the process works and how to make sure your buyers find the home that fits their needs. It’s a different story for the person doing the buying or selling. They’re often stressed, and it’s your responsibility to help them deal with it.

Why Are Homebuyers Stressed?

Research shows that historically, consumers buy or sell homes every six to seven years. Today, however, that number has increased to 10 years. That means your clients have probably forgotten anything they knew about the process of buying a home. When they want to buy again, they can feel somewhat out of control, and that can cause stress.

Besides that, buying a new home comes with making a number of very critical decisions. And as you undoubtedly know, being faced with making lots of decisions that impact your life and finances can’t help but cause stress. Luckily, there are things you can do to make the process much more comfortable.

Control Homebuyers Stress by Setting the Right Expectations

One thing that causes stress in all of us is when we don’t know what to expect, or a situation doesn’t meet our expectations. You can easily help alleviate that type of stress by providing your buyers with information that covers every step of the buying process. Many agents will prepare an ebook or a handout that a buyer can refer to throughout the process to explain things such as:

1. While they don’t pay you directly, they are hiring you to help them find a house.
2. Why you both need to complete a buyer agent agreement (or tenancy agreement), and the advantages it provides.
3. Why they need to get pre-approved for a mortgage before they start looking at homes.
4. How the two of you can work together via the internet when they create an account on the MLS search on your website to collaborate on reviewing homes that may interest them.
5. Why they need to keep track of their showing feedback after they see any house in person because the homes will eventually start running together in their minds.
6. How you will work together to write an offer when they find a home they’d like to purchase; include the strategies that you’ll need to use to avoid making offers that are too high or that could jeopardize their chances of getting the home if the offer is too low.
7. If you’re in a market that is generating multiple offers, explain how to craft offers to be in the best position to win the bidding, and why It’s a good idea to keep looking at homes until the multiple offer situation is resolved. Let them know that they’ll get even more stressed if they wait on the edge of their seats for a resolution – especially if they have lost bids in the recent past.
8. Explain the negotiation process, pointing out that it can be a time when extreme patience is required. Point out that making emotional decisions during negotiations will make a tough negotiation even tougher, so they need to be prepared to be calm.
9. Explain what a contingency is to prepare them to handle a seller who has a slew of them.
10. Explain the due diligence phase of a transaction and prepare your buyers for things that may be found during an inspection and how to handle them.
11. You could also try using a rent calculator so you can be sure about the prices and rates of the properties you’re interested in.

Explain Ahead of Time

There are probably other items that you’d want to include on this list based on your experience. Explaining any of these things when the situation arises is never as effective as having your clients prepared in advance.

For example, if your buyer doesn’t know what a contingency is, you open yourself up to the situation where you say “Good news! The seller accepted your offer, but they’ve added a few contingencies.” You know your client will only hear that they got the house. The fact that there are contingencies will slap them in the face once you explain what they are!