James Buckley's seller clients were moving to the next chapter of their lives. Excitement and anticipation were high as the property went live on the market. The property was prepped, painted, and marketed. The marketing machine went to work. The open house plan was executed flawlessly: lots of traffic with excited buyers and neighbors. Offers began to come in and the first two offers were attractive: they were $30,000 and $40,000 above list price with minimal contingencies and then the most important offer. The buyer’s agent, we'll call her Karen, didn’t ask any questions, except when offers were due. Just after the last open house wrapped up at the end of the first weekend on the market, the buyer’s agent sent over the offer: it was $100,000 over the next highest offer, had minimal contingencies, and didn’t include an escalation clause to mitigate the risk of overpaying! Why did the buyer's agent do this? In short, she was overburdened, didn’t have a team to support her, and wasn’t focused on her clients' needs. She didn’t give the one piece of advice that would have saved the buyers $100,000. The buyers were young too, so this $100,000 could grow to more than $750,000 by the time they retired if invested in low cost broad market ETFs at the stock market’s historical average return. The worst part: her buyer clients don’t even know they lost $100,000.
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