Buyers Who Follow the Crowd Always Lose

by Daniel Beer

The Problem

Stop following the crowd! Like everything else in life, when you are doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you typically will get average results.  That is a law categorically impossible to break.  By definition, if you act average, you will get average.

For home buyers, average takes on the shape of doing what all other buyers are doing.  Looking at the same homes.  Chasing down the latest home to hit Zillow or your favorite website.  Attending the same open houses.  Calling on the same “For Sale” signs. 

The result, much to your chagrin and all too familiar if you are currently on this path, is that you are constantly in a state of frustration as a buyer because the best homes tend to go fast and with multiple offers.

You think you are ahead of the pack because your new listing alert hits and you run out to see the home, but what you find is that the listing alert also prompted dozens of other buyers across the market.  You can’t seem to get ahead.  Always behind.  Always stuck in the crowd.

Sometimes you notice homes that seem to be available without competition.  But they don’t excite you for a wide array of reasons, just like they don’t excite the other buyers.  Could be due to presentation, pricing, staging, photography, or an array of other reasons.   You say no to those homes, just the same way the rest of the market has said no.  Still part of the crowd.

Nearly all buyers in any given market are all going after the same set of homes. That is why you will see one home get multiple offers and sell above ask while the one down the street, typically due to faulty logic and a lack of strategy, will get no offers at all.  Sometimes not even showing activity.

In fact, this is the premise behind why our team has created the 5 Day Blitz™ marketing program for representing home sellers.  It is to take advantage of this mob like behavior and use buyer psychology in the favor of the seller to create a negotiating advantage.

The Solution

The only way to get ahead of the crowd is to align yourself with a true Buyer Specialist that has only one role.  Helping people buy homes.  The right homes.  Regardless if they are currently on market or off market.

Do you want a door opener or a Buyer Specialist?  A door opener is overpaid and offers little value.  A Buyer Specialist earns their fee in spades because they often help you bypass the competition and get the right deal by being able to dedicate themselves to finding you the right home and negotiate it at a favorable value regardless of if it is on MLS or Zillow or any other website.  Those are just mere tools in the Buyer Specialist’s arsenal. 

The Buyer Specialist is not afraid to get on the phone, hit doors, send targeted mail, call agents, call old expired listings, call currently rented homes, etc., all in the name of finding you the right property.  This is especially important in a low inventory environment like the one we currently have.

But that takes a lot of time and dedication.  How can that be done?  Well, it can’t.  At least not by the grand majority of agents.  But it can be done by a Specialist.  See, a Buyer Specialist doesn’t have to spend any time with administrative work, transaction management, listing homes, marketing, worrying about branding, hiring employees, coordinating open houses, taking inbound calls, following up with general leads to the business, working on documents, compliance, etc. 

The Buyer Specialist spends his ENTIRE day focused on one thing.  His buyers.  So while other agents (generalists) are spinning 15 other plates, the Buyer Specialist can laser focus on his committed buyers.  The Buyer Specialist can dig deep for the right property.  Being “on the market” is not relevant to the Buyer Specialist.

Can you imagine showing up to your doctor's office and having the doctor check you in, weigh you, check your blood pressure, excuse himself/herself to go quickly mop the bathroom floors, run over to the mail room, quickly do a complex blood analysis, then go see a cancer patient, followed by a patient with a rare heart abnormality, then a baby, and then a 90-year-old man, before quickly rushing back over to you to see you for your broken arm?  I can’t.  I would be out of there in a heartbeat and in search of a Specialist.