Does the Gold Rule apply to Real Estate leads?

Yes Siree it does.

Doing what is best for others is never the wrong thing to do but in real estate and with real estate leads it is essential to growing your business. The days of hit and run, drive-by sales are long gone as people have access to so much information that it not only spins their heads but it will spin yours as well.

The best way to combat the onslaught of information is to out kind the internet. Being kind necessarily means using the Golden Rule. Treating others as you would like to be treated by others is by far the best way to ensure loyalty and repeat business. Providing the extra degree of additional service to your real estate leads is the surest way to convert them into real estate buyers.

Ignoring the phone call that you promised to make or missing the meeting that you had scheduled are easy examples of not using the Golden Rule.

A tougher example comes in the form of a short story that actually happened and was not to be forgotten: I promise its short!

I had a buyer for a waterfront home that wanted a deal. I found a below market home on the water with a motivated seller who wanted to close as quickly as he could. We got all the way to the day before closing and the seller had a little secret he was trying to keep from everyone. He had a silent second mortgage on the property which he was hoping no one would catch. The title company caught it and the seller admitted it but tried to get my buyer to pay it and close on the house.

He must have figured that the buyer was so invested at that point that he would pay the additional mortgage off as it wasn’t that much.

The buyer asked me what to do.

I said “Walk away and we will find you a better deal without a liar.”

Now it important to note that I was one broke son of a gun in those first years in real estate and one extra broke fella that particular day.

But I remembered the lessons of the past and put the my client’s needs first and gave him an honest assessment of the situation and advice that I would want given to me.

The end of this story is that I sold him the same house after it went to foreclosure and he saved not only the price of the second mortgage but he also got a huge discount off the original price.

The best part of the story is that I received a larger commission check as the bank was really motivated to sell the home. So everyone wins, except for the original seller who killed his own credit because of the foreclosure, all because he did not use the Golden Rule.

The End.