By Jené DeSpain, December 24, 2019
There are many aspects of the buying adventure I truly adore when helping my buying clients. The thrill of happening upon just the right house, the hoops to jump through to create a successful inspection period, the day I get to deliver the keys to them, there are many moments of glee. Writing an offer is one of the highlights for me. Getting to know the listing agent, their seller, and curating just the right blend of features in my offers has become a part of being a buyer’s agent that I “live for”. Bringing just what the seller is hoping for to secure the deal feels like winning the lottery every single time. Part of how I like to shape my offers is to include a personal letter written from my clients to the sellers. Giving buyers an opportunity to pour their hearts out about who they are and why they adore the house they are hoping to buy can be a fun, grounding part of what is often a stressful, full of anticipation time for buyers. Opening an email to read what my wonderful clients have just shared about themselves often brings laughter and tears of hope at the touching sentiment exposed within these drafts.
Recently, I was helping a very special pair of clients in a purchase of a home that had been on the market for a while. The seller was looking for certain terms, purchase price being one of them. After making one leap after another, my buyers found themselves in contract, got into some challenging negotiations during the inspection period, and were just hours away from agreeing to a final price when the seller just stopped coming to the table with us. I tried and tried, offering his agent one fact after another to try and validate our point of view with them. No luck…..
I took a chance. I reached out to the listing agent one last time and asked if she would be ok if I wrote a personal letter to her seller. It’s rare for an agent to let the agent from the other side of the transaction have a “conversation” with her client, but we were working in tandem to bring our clients to an agreeable place, and by luck, she trusted me to connect with him. I did the only thing I could think of, I poured my heart out. I spoke to him personally, and by the magic that sometimes is held within the reveal of our vulnerable selves, he heard me. With less than 10 minutes before our transaction would expire, he came back to the table and agreed to our last offer!
While the selling and buying of property can often be full of computer screens, paperwork, numbers, dates, deadlines, and so much money, behind all of this are people. Sometimes pushing aside the transactional aspects of a deal to find our neighbors, who we share this meaningful city with, smiling back at us, can be the reminder why we want to have the joy of experiencing “Home” here. I adore the opportunities my career brings me to be of service to my clients while getting to know their stories. I cherish the details told to one another, among the people carving out their lives within Portland’s neighborhoods, through this endeavor of transferring one party’s home to the heartstrings and lives of another. There are few things in this life as personal as Home, and that story is a letter worth writing.
