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Welcome to the Commercial Real Estate Mastery podcast, where you'll learn the correct way to identify, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn around and operate real estate in today's market -- a market in which volatility creates opportunity, and sound principles defeat fads and bubbles. And your host is a 25-year commercial real estate veteran and co-owner of over $1 billion in real estate assets, Frank Rolfe.
Webster's Dictionary defines ghosting as the act of suddenly ending all communication with someone without warning, explanation, or closure. This is Frank Rolfe with the Commercial Real Estate Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about what happens when a seller ghosts you during a transaction. Sometimes they will ghost you after initial contact. They'll say, "Well, let me come up with a price, call me back." You try and get a hold of them, you never can again. Sometimes you've already established a price and you're just simply trying to get a contract signed and once again they vanish on you. But what does it all mean and how can you try and get over that? Well, here are some ideas to try and overcome ghosting on the part of the seller.
So one main reason they may be ghosting you is because they're getting scared, because they suddenly are facing the reality of selling what is often their largest asset and they don't know what to do with their life. It's often called seller's remorse. So what is seller's remorse? Seller's remorse is when you start feeling like maybe you shouldn't sell. And every seller at some point in the movie between the start of the very first offer and the day of closing suffers from seller's remorse. It's just a natural byproduct of change because none of us, no human really likes change that much. And now we're talking a huge change. We're talking about them selling off something that they have built from scratch often, and now suddenly they won't have it anymore and it terrifies them. And what do they do rather than tell you, "I don't know, I'm having remorse on it. I'm scared?" They're embarrassed to do that, so they just hide from you.
So how do you overcome that? Well, one thing is to stay calm. Don't push them. Because they've got to work through it. They're not gonna sell unless they're comfortable with selling. So you pushing on them only makes it worse. That only makes them want to ghost you more. If you start calling them and bugging them and bugging them and bugging them, "How come you're not calling me back? What are you doing?" Well, then they're probably never gonna call you back because now you become more of an annoyance to them. Instead, don't be pushy. Just be enthusiastic. Say, "Hey, just checking to follow up, following up again on the deal. No rush, just real excited about it. Give me a call when you have a chance." Typically what will happen is they're gonna work through it. They're gonna come to the conclusion, "Wait a minute. Yeah, I'm selling it, but I get a whole bunch of money." And the spouse will say, "Yeah, I really want you to sell it because I want to move out of here." Whatever the case may be. But don't push them. It's kind of like you've seen in old movies, someone has a mule on a rope. The more they try and pull the mule forward, the more it fights back. So trying to tug on the seller to try and get out of that ghosting mode, that's never gonna work out for you.
Another time they'll ghost you is because they can't decide whether they should sell or not. They just can't make that decision. It's not really a seller's remorse issue. It's not a scared issue. They just don't know. Should I sell now or should I sell later? Should I sell now or should I wait for interest rates to come down? Maybe I'll get a higher price. In that case, sometimes what you can do to make them un-ghost you is to set a false deadline based on something that's to their interest. For example, you've already got your lender ready to go, but you're afraid you're gonna lose the lender if you don't move soon. Those type of issues, because that may take them over the hump. They may say, "Oh, well, you know what? I can't keep pondering. I gotta make a decision. Okay, I'll sell." So giving them a false deadline it might also simply be that you're looking at another property, but you only have enough money to buy one, but you like their property better. So, "Hey, can I buy your property? I'd rather buy your property." And they hear that and they think, "Oh, well, I better move or I may miss out on the deal altogether." Also, another reason they sometimes will ghost you is they're waiting to get input from some other people and...
And they still don't have the input yet. And often they're too embarrassed to tell you that because you talked to them several times already and they kept saying, "Let me talk to my son," but they don't want you to know that the son hates them and never really talks to them and they've got 19 calls into the son and he won't return their call. So rather than tell you that because it embarrasses them, they instead ghost you. They don't intend on ghosting you forever. They're ghosting you until they find out from their son. But as we all know, the son might not respond for a year. Maybe it's been years since they ever even talked to them. So what's the solution to that one? Well, again, stay upbeat. Stay enthusiastic. Sellers love enthusiasm. It affirms they made a good decision buying the property to begin with. It affirms that they're nice people that people like. And often you gotta remember, if these people aren't getting back to them with information, at some point they get fed up with them. So if the son doesn't respond after 19 calls, they may say, "Oh, yeah, well, screw him. I'm giving up on him. I gave it a shot. He didn't do anything. I don't want to do it anymore." And in many cases, that is gonna work out for you really well because now you kind of take the part of the expert that he couldn't reach. Finally, and this is a big one, this is the scary one, is they got a better offer. Because when someone gets a better offer, what do they do? They don't want to tell the first person they got a better offer because that's kind of embarrassing. So instead, what they'll do is they'll just ghost them, abandon them, give up on them.
You probably had that maybe when you sold a used car and you had one person, "Yeah, I want to buy it. I'll give you 5,500, bucks" and another guy comes in and says, "I'll give you 6,000." Well, I don't want to tell the 5,500 guy that even though I told him, "Okay, I'll do it," that I've changed my mind and gone with somebody else. So they just want to ghost you instead. So what's the solution on that one? That one's really hard because they're gonna go with the other guy unless you do something quickly. So often the best thing to do is just to bring this deal into one final moment and simply say, "What have I got to do to get you to sell this thing to me?" I had a case years ago. I had a relative who was in a house. It was a rental house. And they called me up and they said, "Hey, we had some people come in here and they were, I don't know who they were or what. They came in with the owner of the house, just poking around, looking at it. Then they left." I knew what that was. That person was gonna sell that rental house out from under them. And the problem was this was in a market where there was just literally no rental housing. So I called up the owner of the house and said, "Look, what have I got to do to have you sell the house to me? Because I know what you're doing. I know you probably have another buyer." They said, "Yes, we do." I said, "Okay, well, what would it take for you to do it?" And even though they initially thought, "Well, I can't do it. I told them I'd sell to them," but at the same time everyone in America has a price. So they thought through how much the money was in order to do it, and they gave me the offer and I said, "Okay, I'll buy it," because I didn't want to lose the house.
I couldn't afford to lose the house. So that theory of "What would I have to do?" That's a very, very powerful commentary for most sellers because it now puts them in the corner of making that final decision. And often you're gonna like the end result because sometimes what they want to go with you over the other seller isn't that big a deal. It's kind of crazy that in a lot of transactions, even large transactions, sellers can be swayed by very small amounts of money. And as a result, you can sway them back with very small amounts of money. But I would definitely want to know what I would have to do to get the thing done. How much would I have to pay them in order to have them drop whoever they've ghosted me for and change their loyalty back to me again? The bottom line is that ghosting is just a real part of life today. In today's modern world, people ghost people all the time online and every which way. But when it happens, it doesn't mean the end of the movie. Most times, the ghosting is just buying sellers time to make decisions, to gather input. You have to stay friendly, charming, enthusiastic. Those are the keys to success. This is Frank Rolfe, the Commercial Real Estate Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.