Same Agent. Same Market. Two Completely Different Experiences

Same Agent. Same Market. Two Completely Different Stories

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

People sometimes ask me what it's like to work with buyers. And the honest answer is that no two experiences are the same — not even when they're happening at the exact same time, in the exact same market, with the same agent.

I want to tell you about two buyers I was working with simultaneously. One story you've already heard — the first-time couple who walked into a driveway on a Tuesday afternoon with no intention of making an offer and were under contract by that evening. The other story took five months, a Mother's Day road trip with my dad and my daughter, and a lawnmower.

This buyer came to me with a budget up to $350,000 and a clear picture of what he wanted. Some land. Privacy. Space. He wasn't in a rush, which was good, because the search was going to require patience. There were two things working against him that mattered enormously in a competitive offer situation — he couldn't qualify for a conventional loan, and he had limited cash to work with upfront. In a market where sellers frequently have multiple offers to choose from, a buyer without conventional financing and limited cash reserves is at a real disadvantage against someone who is conventionally financed or paying cash. That reality shaped everything about how we had to approach the search.

Over the following months we covered a lot of ground. We looked at fixer-uppers with inground pools on larger lots — made an offer on one, but couldn't come to terms because the work it needed was simply too much. We looked at older homes on bigger lots where the privacy was there but the outdated interiors weren't giving him what he wanted. We found homes at the top of his budget that checked almost every box but offered no privacy at all — and privacy was the point. We kept going. He was learning with every home we walked through, sharpening his instincts, getting clearer on what actually mattered to him versus what he thought mattered when we started. That kind of education only comes from time in the market, and he was putting in the time.

Then it was Mother's Day weekend. My daughter was flying into town that morning. I was hosting a houseful of family, and my buyer texted me a house that had just gone active and said he thought it might be next door to his ex-sister-in-law. I pulled up the house and sure enough . . . it looked exactly like what he needed and it was next door to someone he knew and cared for.

I ushered my dad to the car, headed to RDU to pick up my daughter (in from CT), and we drove an hour to go show my Buyer the house.

When we pulled up, the ex-sister-in-law did indeed live next door — and they were on great terms, so that was a non-issue and actually a comfort. The house was smaller than anything we'd been looking at. One level. A big fenced backyard. And it was listed at $285,000 — sixty-five thousand dollars below the top of his budget. What I noticed immediately was that this house was made for his life. One level meant everything for his dog. The fenced yard meant everything for his dog. The friendly face next door meant something for him. Sometimes a home stops being about square footage and starts being about fit, and this one fit.

I called the listing agent. The home had gone live only a few hours earlier and the seller wanted to hold off on offers until they'd had some showings and open houses. Under normal circumstances that's a reasonable request. But I knew what this house was, I knew what my buyer had been through for five months, and I knew that waiting meant competing — and competing with his financing situation was exactly what we'd been trying to avoid for months.

She was wonderful to work with but it was a holiday so I had to push her a little — I asked her to call her sellers and put one simple question to them. Their neighbor's friend wants to buy your house. What would it take to lock it down tonight? The answer came back. Five thousand dollars over asking.

Buyer said - "Done"

Now here's what made this moment so significant — and why I want to make sure it doesn't get lost in the story. We had been searching a ten mile radius for five months. We could not reproduce what this house offered at this price anywhere in that search area. Not even close. The financing constraints that had been a liability in every previous offer situation suddenly didn't matter because we weren't competing. The price point that felt like a consolation prize was actually the thing that made everything else possible. Being $65,000 under budget with a non-conventional loan is a completely different situation than being at the ceiling of your budget with the same loan. The math changes. The stress changes. The risk changes.

The inspections went beautifully. Before we closed, I went back to the seller for one more conversation — walked away with a $2,500 credit, some furniture the seller was leaving behind, and a lawnmower.

He came into this search wanting land. He ended up with a one-level home, a fenced yard, a great neighbor, clean inspections, furniture, a lawnmower, and money left over that he never expected to have.

I think about these two stories together often because they happened at the same time and they could not have been more different. One buyer needed speed — a first outing that turned into a same-day offer in a multiple offer situation where precision and urgency were everything. The other needed patience — five months of searching, losing, learning, and waiting for the right moment to arrive. One needed me to be professionally aggressive. The other needed me to be a mom talking to another mom on a Sunday afternoon.

The market doesn't care what tools you show up with. It asks you to read the situation in front of you and respond to what's actually there. After twenty-three years and more than two thousand transactions in Raleigh and Wake County, the thing I know most clearly is that no two buyers need the same thing — and the job is figuring out what this person, in this moment, in this market, actually needs to get home.

Sometimes that's data pulled on a drive home. Sometimes it's an hour on the road on Mother's Day with your dad and your daughter in the backseat.

Whatever it takes.

If you're thinking about buying a home in Raleigh or North Raleigh — whether you're just starting out or you've been at it for months — I'd love to have a conversation about what your search actually looks like and how to approach it strategically given your specific situation.

No pressure. Just an honest conversation about what's possible and how to get there.

Kelly DeBrosse | Broker/Owner | Kelly DeBrosse Real Estate | eXp Realty 919-805-0069 | Kelly@KellyDeBrosse.com kellydebrosse.com | 7209 Creedmoor Rd, Suite 109, Raleigh NC 27613