Are you chicken?

A recent article in NAR’s REALTOR® Magazine quotes Robert Jenson, a sales associate at RE/MAX Central in Las Vegas, as saying: “Most associates are too chicken to qualify buyers because they’re afraid to lose them. But you’re better off with two qualified and motivated buyers than 40 who’ll run you ragged and then not buy.”

Do you check to see if your potential buyers are actually motivated to buy and that they’re qualified to purchase the homes they’re looking at? Or do you just sign a buyer agency contract (you do sign one, right?), load them in the car and hope they eventually purchase something?

Or to put it differently: are you chicken?

PAR has a form called the Non-Exclusive Buyer Agency contract. The basic purpose of Form NBA is to help brokers and consumers “get their feet wet” with each other on a non-exclusive basis while ensuring that the broker is entitled to payment if he/she is the procuring cause of a purchase.

Many brokers object to the use of Form NBA because they believe it provides too much of an opportunity for a consumer to walk away from the brokerage. And it does. What many brokers and agents don’t always see, though, is that it also provides an opportunity for a broker to walk away from a consumer.

So maybe if you’re too “chicken” (hey…not my words, OK?) to aggressively qualify a buyer from the moment he walks into your office you might prefer to work with that person for a few weeks under a non-exclusive buyer agency contract instead. Then if it turns out that maybe he isn’t that motivated, or he’s not able to qualify for a loan, or he’s just somebody you dread spending time with, it is much easier to end that professional relationship and move on rather than being locked into a long term exclusive agency agreement.