How Real Estate Negotiation Has Changed, and What I Kept
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When I started, you printed the contract, drove it over, and presented it out loud in the seller's living room. Then you left the room and let them talk. Sometimes you waited in the driveway. Almost nobody does any of that now, and something real went out of the business.
You used to carry the offer in your hand
When I started in this business, you did not email an offer. There was nowhere to email it to.
You printed the contract, you put it in a folder, and you drove it to the listing agent. Then you sat down with the sellers in their living room, or at the agent's office, and you presented it out loud. You walked them through the price, the date, the deposit, the contingencies, and you explained why each one was built the way it was. You answered their questions with your own face in front of them.
And then you left the room and let them talk.
Sitting in the driveway
I have done that more times than I can count, and I remember the waiting far better than the presenting.
Several times I drove out to a seller's house, presented my clients' offer, and then went and sat in my car. In their driveway. With the engine off, waiting for them to make a decision.
There is a reason I did that, and I will be honest about it. It is kind of hard to say no to somebody when they are hanging out in your driveway.
That is not a trick, exactly. Nobody was trapped and nobody was pressured. But presence does something that paper cannot. It says this offer is not one of forty things on my to-do list. It says my clients are real, I drove here for them, and I am going to wait while you decide. Sellers felt that, and a decent number of them came out to the car to tell me yes rather than let me sit there.
I got answers the same afternoon that would now take three days of unreturned texts.
What got lost
Almost nobody presents in person now. Offers arrive as attachments. Whole transactions close without the two agents ever hearing each other's voices, and something real went out of the business when that happened.
An email cannot read a room. It cannot notice the seller's face change at the word "June," which is how you learn that the settlement date matters more than the price. It cannot tell you that the husband nodded at the rent-back while the wife was still looking at the number. It cannot hear the pause before "well, we would need to think about the inspection."
Every one of those is information, and information is what you build a winning offer out of. A contract sent into an inbox collects none of it.
There is also a quieter loss. When two agents have spoken, they behave better toward each other for the next sixty days. When they have only exchanged PDFs, the deal gets brittle the moment something goes wrong at the inspection, because neither of them has any relationship to spend.
So I still do it
Not every time. Most transactions do not need it and it would be theatre.
But any time we are close, or the situation is competitive, or I genuinely need to know what will actually secure the contract for my client, I ask to present in person or on video. I ask the listing agent directly, and I tell them it will take ten minutes.
Plenty of them say no. That is fine, and it is information too. The ones who say yes are almost always the ones who will also answer a question, which means the half hour pays twice — once for the presentation and once for everything I learn while I am there.
The same instinct drives the phone call I make before writing any offer, where I simply ask the other agent what their seller needs. I have called that prospecting for information for as long as I have been doing it, and it is pure old-school practice. I wrote it up properly in prospecting for information.
What is genuinely better now
I am not interested in pretending the old days were better across the board. Plenty of this has improved, and improved a lot.
Electronic signatures are a real gift. A client on a Navy deployment or a seller in another state can execute a contract in twenty minutes instead of a week of overnight envelopes, and deals no longer die because somebody could not get to a fax machine. Marketing reach is not remotely comparable — a listing I put up today is seen by more people before lunch than a newspaper advertisement reached in a month. And documentation is far better, which protects everybody; there is a written trail now for things that used to live in somebody's memory of a phone call.
Speed has been the mixed blessing. We can move faster than we can think, and a buyer can now lose a house in the time it takes to drive home and talk it over.
Where the business is going wrong
Here is my actual complaint, and it is not about technology.
There is a generation of agents who will not use the phone. They will text, they will email, they will send a document through a portal, and they will do almost anything to avoid a conversation with another human being who might ask them something they have not prepared for.
Those agents are leaving their clients' money on the table and they do not know it. Every question I ask on a phone call is a question they are not asking. Every thing I learn in a living room is a thing their buyer never got the benefit of. The client has no way to see the difference, which is the worst part — you cannot miss the house you never knew you could have won.
And it produces failures that are simply administrative. I have been the listing agent on a property that took in twenty-seven offers, and seven of them arrived with no call, no text, no confirmation of any kind. One I did not find for three weeks because it had landed in spam. Those buyers had a real offer on a house they wanted and it was never read. They will believe forever that they were outbid. The full story is in how I run a multiple offer process for sellers.
Teaching it forward
I think part of my job at this stage is to teach this to agents coming up, and I do, whenever one will let me.
Pick up the phone. Ask the question you think you are not allowed to ask, because most of the time you are. Volunteer something first so the other agent has a reason to talk to you. Go and present the offer if they will let you. Confirm that your paperwork arrived, in writing, every single time. Say thank you to the agent on the other side in front of their client, because you want them on your side and it costs you nothing.
None of that is complicated and none of it is technology. It is manners and effort, applied on purpose, and it is worth real money to the person who hired you.
Where people get stuck
Clients get stuck assuming all agents work the same way and that the differences are about personality or marketing budget. The differences are mostly about whether somebody will do the unglamorous, slightly uncomfortable thing — make the call, drive over, wait for the answer.
Agents get stuck believing that efficiency is the goal. Efficiency is a fine goal for paperwork. It is a terrible goal for a negotiation, where the whole advantage comes from knowing something the other side did not mean to tell you, and you cannot learn that from an attachment.
If you want the rest of how I work, it is in the complete guide to real estate negotiation in Southern Maryland.
Frequently Asked Questions
An agent printed the contract, drove it to the listing agent, and presented it out loud to the sellers, explaining each term and answering questions in person before leaving the room.
An email cannot read a room. Presenting in person reveals which terms actually matter to the seller, and it builds a working relationship the deal will need later.
She would present a client's offer and then wait in her car outside while the sellers decided. Presence signals that the offer is serious, and it is hard to say no to someone waiting outside.
Electronic signatures, far wider marketing reach, and much better documentation. Deals no longer fail because somebody could not reach a fax machine.
Speed without thought, and a generation of agents who avoid the phone. Every question not asked on a call is information the client never gets the benefit of.
Yes. On one 27-offer listing, seven arrived with no call or text at all, and one was not found for three weeks because it had gone to spam.
Old School Where It Counts
I will still pick up the phone, still ask the awkward question, and still drive the offer over if that is what secures your contract. Let us talk.
Dawn Riley
Associate Broker, Realtor, Master Certified Negotiator
The Riley Team at Deep Roots Real Estate
410-414-2438
dawn@dawnriley.net
https://dawnriley.net/