I was chatting with a buyer over the weekend. He had called about a listing that I put on the market last week, which is now under contract. And he was like, that's the one, I finally found the right one. And you know what I usually try to do with the buyer when they call me about a property that I have that's under contract, is I try to talk to them about what it means to have a designated buyer's agent working for you. And I suggested that to him. I said you should be working with somebody local in our MLS, a designated buyer's agent. Have you thought about that? And he did not. He was like, I don't want to sign anything. I want to work with the listing agents, and I want to call on the listings that I see. And I said, Well, I get that, but you probably have a day job. You probably go to your office everyday, and you're checking your phone in the morning, in the evening, and maybe over lunch. And you're trying to piecemeal the Zillow sites, the realtor.com sites, maybe you're on somebody's PCS search, which makes it very difficult to really seriously buy a home. They said, if you have a buyer's agent, whether it's one of mine or not, they are boots on the ground. Their 9 am to 5 pm job is finding you your home, checking off the checkboxes on your wish list and representing you to make the deal happen. If you are doing it yourself, yes, I get it. But you're starting from scratch every time with a different agent, which can be incredibly frustrating, and you're probably losing a lot, which is also frustrating. 

Buying a home, believe it or not, should be a very fun and rewarding process. You should have a person who is side stepping with you all the way through the process from the beginning going over your want and need and your deal breaker list to the middle, all the contractual stuff. Making sure you understand the offer to purchase top to bottom, inside and out to the closing. To make sure you understand what's going to happen prior to closing, the final walkthrough. Looking over the title documents and understanding what you need to bring to the closing table. And really that is their 9 am to 5 pm job, so let them work for you and do their job efficiently and well. He was a little surprised by that. He just assumed that anybody you call would be working for you. And that's not how it is in Wisconsin. Everybody works for the seller unless they're hired by you to be a buyer's representative. And that's what my buyer's agents do. They have their top ten to 15 buyers. They have their wants and needs lists in front of them every day, and they scour the MLS site as well as the Zillow for sale by owners to make sure they're seeing everything for their buyers that they're working with. 

And I know people keep saying it's a great time to get back in the market because the market is normalizing, 100% true. But I have to tell you, the most attractive properties that are priced well are still selling with multiple offers, so it's going to open the door for more buyers but it is still competitive. So still in your best advantage to have somebody who if you see something or they see something on a Wednesday, can say, you know what, I'm going to go do a video for you. I'll get you the videos by tonight so that we can have a good conversation. If you should make the trip up here to look at this house, that's how the process should go. It should be your sort of in the passenger seat, not in the driver's seat. So if you're feeling like you're in the driver's seat, you might want to bring out a professional to help you relax a little bit and help them guide you through the process. If that's something you're interested in, give us a call to JWP You group. We would love to be your guide and we'd love to help you realize your dream of home ownership in Northern Wisconsin.