Here Are the Keys. Let Me Know When It’s Over

By Kelly DeBrosse | eXp Realty | 23+ years serving Raleigh, Wake & surrounding counties

I remember the first time a past client handed me the keys to their house and basically told me to let them know when it was all over. There wasn’t a long conversation about how the process was going to work or what I was going to do. We had already been through a real estate transaction together. They asked if there was anything else I needed from them, told me to let them know who they needed to pay and when, handed me the keys and left me to take care of the rest.

I’ve had clients do this quite a few times since then, and I have to admit these have become some of my favorite transactions. It means the world to me every time someone trusts me enough to do it, because I know exactly what happened before we ever got to the point of them handing me those keys. We’ve already had the transaction where I explained the logic behind the recommendations I was making. They’ve already experienced whether I return their calls, do what I say I’m going to do and follow through. More than likely, we’ve already had something go wrong too, because I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a real estate transaction where everything happened exactly as everyone expected it to.

They’ve seen how I behave when that happens.

Communication is probably a much bigger part of building that trust than I realize while it’s happening. If I’m working with a couple, I almost always start a group text so everybody is getting the same information at the same time. Nobody has to remember exactly what I said and then explain it to someone else. I’m also probably a little addicted to my email, so if something only requires a quick response, it’s pretty unusual for it to take me more than an hour to answer.

One of my clients, who I’ve now worked with five times, recently asked me how in the world I keep up with all of the different text conversations I have going at once. I told her that the iPhone allowing me to name and pin conversations was pretty much life changing for me. It’s funny because that seems like such a small thing, but I think all of those little things matter over the course of a transaction. My clients learn pretty quickly that they aren’t going to have to chase me to find out what’s happening.

That becomes even more important when what’s happening isn’t good.

I have always believed all news in a real estate transaction should travel quickly, but bad news should travel the fastest. I often tell a story about an agent who received notice on Christmas Day that a contract was being terminated. It was terrible news, it was Christmas, and out of what I’m sure was thoughtfulness and kindness, the agent decided to wait until the next day to tell the clients. The agent didn’t understand that there was a deadline involved with a $50,000 deposit. By the time the clients received the information, that deadline had passed. The 24-hour delay cost them $50,000 and ultimately became an insurance claim.

I don’t tell that story because I think the agent was a bad person. Quite the opposite. The decision came from a kind place, but the agent was poorly informed and, as a result, neglected a fiduciary responsibility to the clients. The information belonged to them, and they needed it when the agent received it. Good intentions didn’t change what happened, and mistakes we aren’t willing to learn from are mistakes someone else is eventually going to repeat.

That story has stayed with me. If I have a problem and I have the ability to also bring you some answers or options, that’s what I’m going to do. I would much rather call and say, “Here’s what happened, here are the options I see and here’s what I think we should do.” Sometimes it isn’t reasonable to wait long enough to get those answers. In that case, you’re going to hear from me anyway. I’ll tell you what happened, what I know, what I don’t know yet, what I’m waiting on and what I’m doing to get the answers. Knowing I’m here and don’t know yet is far more powerful than silence.

By the time one of my past clients hands me the keys to another house, they’ve already experienced all of that with me. They know I’m going to tell them what I really think, they know I’ll explain why I think it, and they know that when something goes wrong I’m not going to disappear while I try to figure out how to tell them.

What they may not realize is that being trusted that completely changes something on my side too.

I’m already someone who takes a significant amount of personal responsibility for the projects and processes I’m involved in, but when I know I’m not going to be walking and talking a client through every step, I’m probably even more careful. All of those normal conversations produce information. A seller tells me something that changes how I look at a repair. We talk about whether spending money on something is really worthwhile. I find out that timing matters more to them than something else I may have assumed was important. When those conversations aren’t happening every day, I have to be careful not to overlook something that might have come out if they were.

There isn’t room for me to assume I know something just because someone trusts me. If I’m going to make a decision, I better have the information I need to support it, and I need to know which decisions I can reasonably make and which ones still belong to my client.

That’s particularly true when I’m handling the preparation of a house for sale. I document the entire upfit in a spreadsheet with the work, costs and details. My clients approve the final plan and they write the checks. What they’ve turned over to me is the process of getting us there and then getting the work done. As things come up along the way, I tell them what the question was, what options I had, which direction I went and why. Just because they didn’t need to be standing beside me while I made that decision doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to understand how I made it.

There is also another side to this that I really enjoy. Working with someone who already knows me takes an enormous amount of pressure out of the process. When I’m first working with someone, I’m teaching and explaining as we go, and sometimes I’m trying pretty hard to convince them of a path I believe is in their best interest. We’re also still getting to know each other, so I don’t necessarily know whether the next recommendation is going to be an easy conversation or a battle. That can be stressful.

With my longtime clients, I get to be completely myself.

Someone once described me in a review as a “force of nature,” and I actually took it as a compliment because I knew exactly what they meant. I’m not particularly passive when I think something needs to get done. I move quickly, I ask a lot of questions, I have opinions, and when I see a problem I’m usually already trying to figure out how we’re going to solve it. I’m also very aware that can be intimidating to some personality types when they don’t know me yet.

My longtime clients know there is a difference between me having a very strong opinion about what I think they should do and me believing I have the right to make that decision for them. I can tell them I think they’re making the wrong choice, explain exactly why I think that and probably make a pretty strong case for doing something differently. They also know that if they listen to all of that and say, “I understand, Kelly, but this is what I want to do,” then that’s what we’re going to do. It’s their house, their money and their decision.

I think that’s a big part of why these transactions become so enjoyable for me. They really don’t feel like work in the same way. Neither of us has to spend a lot of energy wondering about the other person’s intentions. I can be honest without worrying that disagreement is going to damage the relationship, and they don’t have to manage me in order to remain in control of their own transaction.

Maybe that’s really what those keys mean to me.

Someone who has already seen me at work is saying they trust me enough to step away from a process that most people find pretty stressful and let me carry a lot of it for them. There’s freedom in that for both of us, and I absolutely enjoy it. But I’m also extremely sensitive to the fact that we already built something together that matters to me, and I don’t ever want to be careless with it.

So yes, some of my favorite calls are the ones where someone I’ve worked with before tells me they have another house to sell. Sometimes the conversation really is as simple as, “Is there anything else you need?” and “Who do I pay and when?”

Then they hand me the keys.

And I know exactly what they’ve entrusted me with.