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Prospecting for Information: The Questions I Ask Before I Write Your Offer

Prospecting for Information: The Questions I Ask Before I Write Your Offer

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A Calvert County agent asking questions and taking notes with clients during a home visit.
Fifteen minutes on the phone beats any tactic that comes after it.

By Dawn Riley, Associate Broker, Realtor and Master Certified Negotiator | Published September 11, 2026

There is a step in my process that takes fifteen minutes and changes more outcomes than anything else I do. I call the agent on the other side and ask what their client actually needs. It is old-fashioned, unglamorous, and almost nobody bothers.

The phone call almost nobody makes

There is a step in my process that takes about fifteen minutes and changes more outcomes than anything else I do. I call the agent on the other side and I ask them what their client needs.

That is it. That is the whole secret weapon, and I am always slightly amazed at how few agents bother.

I have called this prospecting for information since long before anybody was teaching it in a classroom. It is old-fashioned, it is unglamorous, and it works, because the alternative is guessing. An agent who does not make that call is writing an offer based on what they imagine a seller wants, which usually means what they would want, which is a different person entirely.

Why the other agent should actually answer you

Agents are trained to guard everything, so you will sometimes get a wall. But it is worth understanding why a good listing agent should talk to you, because if you understand it you can say it out loud.

It is in their seller's interest.

If I am listing a house and a buyer's agent calls to ask whether my sellers need a longer settlement, telling them serves my client. That buyer can now write an offer that actually fits, instead of a generic one my sellers will have to counter. I get a stronger contract and fewer rounds of negotiation. Withholding it just produces a pile of offers that miss.

So when I make this call as a buyer's agent, I frame it that way. Something close to: I want to write you an offer your seller will actually like, so help me aim it. That sentence opens more doors than any clever question.

Go first

Here is the mechanic that makes the rest work. I volunteer something before I ask for anything.

I will tell the listing agent something true and general about my buyers. That they are pre-underwritten. That they are flexible on dates. That they have been looking since spring and this is the one. Nothing confidential, nothing that weakens my position — just something real.

A person who has just been handed something feels the pull to hand something back. That is not a manipulation tactic, it is how human beings are wired, and it is the single most reliable way I know to turn a guarded agent into a talkative one.

The questions about money

I want to know how this seller thinks about the financial side, which is rarely as simple as the highest number.

  • Are there offers already, and can you tell me roughly where the top one sits?
  • Would your seller rather have a lower price with help toward their own closing costs? Some sellers genuinely prefer that once they understand what it does to the appraisal risk.
  • Is there personal property they would rather handle outside the sale?
  • Is your seller open to an escalation addendum, or would they set that aside?

That last one saves everybody time. Some sellers and some listing agents will not entertain an escalation at all, and writing one into a situation where it will be ignored can get your offer set aside on a technicality. Better to ask. I go through the form itself in the Maryland escalation addendum, explained.

The questions about the calendar

Timing is where I find the most unclaimed value, because it is often free for my buyer to give and worth real money to the seller.

  • Does your seller want a short settlement or a long one?
  • Do they need to stay in the house afterward, and for how long?
  • Is something driving this — a job start, a lease ending, a contract on their next place?
  • How flexible are they, honestly, if my buyers can work around them?

The answers here are what produced the trade I use most often, which is a free rent-back paired with the seller buying a home warranty. You cannot construct that if you do not know the seller needs time.

The questions about risk

This bucket is the one most agents skip entirely, and it is frequently the one that decides the house.

  • Does your seller favor a real preapproval over a prequalification? Would they like to speak to my buyer's lender directly?
  • Do they care what kind of loan it is, and if so, why? The why matters more than the answer.
  • Is the appraisal making them anxious at this number?
  • Are they comfortable with the standard inspection window, or would something different help them?

A seller who has had one deal collapse at financing is a completely different negotiating partner than one who has not. They will trade money for certainty, and they will do it gratefully. But you have to know that about them first.

The last question, which is the best one

However the call has gone, I finish with some version of the same thing.

Is there anything else that really matters to your seller here?

That open question has produced more useful answers than the rest of my list put together. It is where you learn that the sellers care about the dog being able to stay until the fence is up at the new place, or that the wife's mother lives two doors down, or that they have promised the dining room set to a niece. None of that appears in the MLS. All of it can be used to write an offer that feels like it was made for them.

When they will not tell you anything

Plenty of agents give you nothing. That is their call, and I do not push.

What I do instead is switch to either-or questions, because they are much easier to answer than open ones. Quick settlement or longer? Clean offer, or would the seller consider paying some of my buyer's costs? Fast inspections, or do they need more room? Even a guarded agent will often pick one, and a pick is information.

And if I still get nothing, I have learned something anyway: I am writing partly blind, so I build in more margin and I stop assuming the seller has been given good advice.

What I will not ask, and what I will not say

There is a line here and it matters.

I do not ask a listing agent to tell me the contents of another buyer's offer, and I do not want them to. If an agent volunteers that, it tells me exactly what they would do with my client's paperwork in the same situation, and I make a note of it.

I also do not hand over my own client's position while I am collecting information. There is a real difference between "my buyers are flexible on timing" and "my buyers are approved to $640,000 and they love this house." One of those helps me. The other one is the mistake I wrote about in using silence in a real estate negotiation, where an agent handed me a sentence that cost her buyers $23,000.

Where agents get stuck

Two failures, and I see both constantly.

The first is never calling at all. Sending the offer into an inbox and waiting is not representation, it is administration.

The second is calling and then talking the whole time. The point of the call is to collect, not to perform. If you come off that phone knowing more than you did and having given away nothing you needed, you have just done the highest-value fifteen minutes of the entire transaction.

The rest of my process is in the complete guide to real estate negotiation in Southern Maryland.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Further Reading

Want an Agent Who Makes the Call?

Before I write your offer I will find out what the other side actually needs. Let us talk about your purchase or your listing.

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/