The Salt Spring Island Real Estate Game
As we all know, there are two sides to the Real Estate game, buying Real Estate and Selling Real Estate. As part of this there are two very different personality types with the associated Realtors®. The buyer wants all the details, the good the bad and the ugly, take the makeup off and show me the blemishes and then get me the best price you can. The seller doesn’t want to hide the blemishes but focus the attention on other aspects that may overshadow the weak points of their property. The designer dress or well tailored suit enhances the positive attributes and minimizes the less than perfect aspects. The buyer wants a down and dirty straight shooter and the seller wants a bit of song and dance.
While any salesperson has to be somewhat of a Chameleon, there is a limit to what they can pull off. People are pretty adept at seeing through a false front. Personally I have been in sales my whole life and have learned to be true to my nature. I actually sold door to door vacuum cleaners 40 years ago but had the flim flam knocked out of me pretty quick. I’m a blue Chevy. I can be shades of blue but I will never be red or white.
Here comes the conundrum. I am primarily a buyers agent. I’m fussy about details and will investigate things to death. This is great for buyers but problematic for some sellers. Hence, I am not a big listing agent. Sellers don’t want a straight shooter, they want a song and dance man. The problem comes in getting in contact with buyers. In the beginning of their property search, potential buyers will call a listing agent for more information. If that agent is good, they will switch hats and become a buyers agent if that property is not the right one for the client. They will then suggest other properties to the client that might work. This is how the game is played. If you have a lot of listings, the odds of you making contact with buyers goes way up, even if you never sell one of your own listings. It has been known that they will use the listing as a bait and switch. That is a listing that attracts a lot of attention but never sells as the Realtor® uses it as a launching point to get clients to sell other listings. Not common but it does happen. Also the more listings you have, the more successful you look and you attract more listings.
Real Estate on Salt Spring Island is no different than other places, it’s just a smaller gene pool.