Buyers Agent: Driving around Buyers Required?

[Samantha M.]

Is it assumed that realtors will typically drive around the buyers to look at houses? Is it a deal breaker if the realtor is unable to do this? The reason I ask is my daughter just activated her license with a broker. She is a real estate agent here in Dallas, and the broker is in Austin with no offices in DFW yet. As such there is no office here that the buyers will be able to meet her so that she would be able to drive them around to look at houses.

The alternative in this case if she needed to drive them around would be to meet at a neutral location like starbucks, or pick them up from their home. Neither of which sounds very convenient. If she could meet buyers at the house that would be ideal.

Thanks guys

[Joel Owens]

Hi Samantha,

Are we talking regular home buyers here and not investors correct??

If so the first thing your daughter does is give them to a loan broker in house or otherwise to qualify them for free as to their capacity to qualify for purchasing a property. The mortgage broker needs to pull credit to and see income statements not just take the buyers word for it.

The buyer has to be ready, willing, able, and realistic in their goals.

Example they can't want a size, location, etc. that dictates a 400k house when they can only buy a 250k house. You either have to change the area or the expectations of what they will get in the area they want.

Now if your daughter has found them to be good buyer with credit AND they are realistic with what they want to buy you move to the next step. You send them lists of properties. Many properties do not look like the pictures and some are worse or better looking than shown. The other unknown factor is the buyers not might like a power station in the yard, barking dogs next door, power lines in back, train close by, etc.

So if they have say ten properties they selected the buyers have more time than the agent. Tell the buyers to do a drive by of the properties on the MLS sheets they have and then narrow down to the top ones they want to see the inside of. Then you daughter makes those appointments to see the inside in one day grouping.

The goal is you do not want to waste your time as an agent or the buyers but you tell them to see how they like the outside so they do not waste time looking at stuff they know they will not like.

Being a residential buyers agent takes a ton of time versus a listing agent because you can have 10 listings to sell but cannot show as one agent to ten different buyers all on the weekend when they want to see things. You burn up a lot of gas and time. I do not do residential but I know how my friends work it to maximize income.

Your daughter might want to forget the brokerage she is at and go work for a new home subdivision especially if that is booming in that area. You do not drive all over creation, the product to sell is almost the same with minor tweaks, the builder gives incentives to sell versus getting a listing with a stubborn seller, you can show more buyers groups very fast in a day and sell multiple properties. Back in the heyday in GA in 2005 some of my friends with Ryland homes were closing out 8 homes a month. They were making 150k to over 200k a year. The key is that you plan for eventually the construction market cycling out and sales flattening and moving to regular sales again or distressed sales. So you might have a selling wave of new construction for 3 to 4 years before it cycles out. If she saves and invest the money instead of living "high on the hog" she should be fine.