Writing that post the other day about Love Letters made me think about the bigger picture of buying a home, that is presenting your offer. The truth is that the toy pictured above is quite possibly the most common way that Real Estate agents present their client’s offers. The offer is faxed to the listing agent who then presents it to the seller. I don’t know about you, but very few things drive me as crazy as fax machines. They always seem to jam on the 10th page of an 11 page fax, I’ll get an error message or a paper jam or something. Sometimes the fax machine sends 3 or 4 pages through at once and I then have to try and figure out which pages were received and which were not. It seems like I’ve spent half of my life next to a fax machine. It’s actually much easier, and less stressful to hand deliver the originals….even if it means going to Detroit! It would be a really, really rare scenario for me to fax a client’s offer to a listing agent, but when I’m the listing agent I see it alot.

Over the years I’ve seen this scenario more than once: 2 hours after my clients and I have reviewed offers on their home I get a call from Joe Jones of XYZ Realty. “Hi Jim, I just wanted to touch base with you about the offer I faxed you earlier today”

ME: “….ummm, I didn’t get an offer from you earlier today. What time did you send it?

Joe ” Oh, no, about 2:00PM?, remember I talked to you about it yesterday?”

ME “Sure, I remember the call…but I got 5 offers today and you didn’t call to confirm. Did you?”

Joe “…ummm, well actually no. But I know it got sent!”

ME ” Sorry Joe, I didn’t receive it…and we just ratified anyway.”

Bottom line….faxed offers are highly problematic! Certainly there are plenty of situations where sellers are not present to review offers, but in those cases a presentation should be made to the listing agent…in person. I honestly think it’s the single most important task I can do for a client. In a presentation I get to convey the heart of my buyers to a seller, or sellers. Typically, here’s how it goes: I contact the other agent and let him/her know that I’ve got an offer on their property and set up an appointment to present it to both the listing agent and the seller. When we meet I’ll chat a little with the sellers about who they are and about where they’re going…we’ll also talk a bit about their house and the things they’ve done to it. I’ll describe my clients to them and present the buyer’s love letter, and give them time to read it, before I go over anything else. After that I’ll give the contract to the listing agent along with the signed disclosures and I’ll give a one page summary that I’ll have prepared to the sellers highlighting again who the clients are and the key features of the offer in bullet points, price, initial deposit, pre-approval letter, close of escrow date, percentage of down payment, total contingency days, any unique terms..ie, whether or not there is a rent back provision…etc. These bullet points speak directly to the key areas that sellers are most concerned with and we can thus eliminate a long winded description of contract boilerplate that ultimately could bore everybody to tears anyway. Often, the terms are more important to the sellers than the price is. It’s actually relatively short, sweet and painless…and most importantly it’s far more effective than faxing! If you’re a buyer in this market and you’re coming in under the asking price doesn’t it make sense to have an advocate…in person?