It may be Valentine’s Day but there really is no good time to break up with your real estate agent. They are sensitive souls and they care so deeply about your needs. It’s hard to let them down when they care so deeply but are yet unable to sell your home at the reasonable price they said was right for the market.
Fear not; here are some key phrases that will help you let your estate agent down gently:
“It’s not you, it’s the market”
They are going to blame themselves no matter what you say. You know they are going to be hanging around outside your home for the next few weeks in the hope that you take them back. Blaming the market rather than them directly, allows them enough self-esteem to squander with pestering emails about ‘new ideas to market your property’ over the coming months.
“It’s my fault. I should never have given you a key”
Blaming yourself is another way for you to help rescue a crumb of self-esteem from your estate agent. Giving them a key means they felt special. They had a key to your home and you had the key to their heart – the prospect of money.
“We only said we’d be exclusive for 12 weeks” Going multi-agency can hit them hard. You never said you would be exclusive forever but in the back of their mind, they always hoped for it. They will ask themselves questions like ‘do they do their viewings the same as me?’ and ‘are their room measurements bigger than mine?’. Your job is not to reassure them, it’s to let them know they are on the way out unless things change.
“I’ve been cheating on you with the rental market”
This is a last resort measure. It is going to hurt them hard that a letting agent might suddenly start feeling the love of your property. The thought that you could be making money too will probably break their fragile heart. Putting other people into the relationship will crowd them out and that is a pretty devastating when you have committed yourself to a property and its owner.
“You didn’t sell my fucking house”
So the needy texts and calls haven’t stopped and you’ve set up a rule on your emails so that messages go straight to your deleted folder but STILL they persist in trying to get back with you. Tell them you have a Rightmove log-in yourself and that the pictures you took on your iPhone 7 blow theirs out of the water. It’s harsh but it’s fair.
Lloydie 