Brooke Wolford

By Brooke Wolford

I have gone through a recent run of buyers who seem to take an extremely long amount of time to purchase a property. I began to feel pretty frustrated. I understood that this was happening with many buyers outside of my own, but it still seemed to frustrate me.

I then found what seemed to be a perfect buyer.  She was approved, knew what she wanted, and had a deadline of when she wanted to move. I couldn’t have been more excited.

I began to show her properties. We would find something she loved. She would take her parents and boyfriend through the property.  I would expect her to put an offer in and then she wouldn’t return my phone calls or emails for days.  This repeated itself several times before I finally sat down and had a talk with her. (I don’t know why I waited so long).

After speaking with her about this issue, she told me that she has a mental condition. This condition is called kainotophobia (Fear of change). I immediately felt horrible.  Here I was getting all frustrated for months and all along she hand this condition that could completely prevent her from purchasing a property at all.  Besides that, I had concerns about her feeling like she could or would make a poor decision.

This type of thing has to pretty common, right? Maybe we as agents need to get some of of specialized training in mental illness?

What I can say is that we need to be empathetic to our clients.  We need to be able to communicate to them better.  In my case, I should have spoken with her sooner.

Brooke Wolford is a real estate practitioner with Edina Realty, Hastings, Minn.  Follow her blog at adventuresinrookierealestate.com.