Poster 7

First Amendment Agitators

My Grandpa Gerald crumpled up the pack of cigarettes and threw them in the garbage can in the early 1960’s. A doctor told him that smoking could be bad for his health. My Grandma Harriet on the other hand kept puffing away her whole lifespan. She would even sneak in a few while on oxygen during the sunset years, Once trying to hide the obsession from my Aunt Linda, she shoved the offending item into her purse. If only Tom Hanks had such materials on that Island on Castaway.

Most people fall in the category of Grandma Harriet when it comes to willpower. This is why it’s hard for me to break my bad habit of watching the first amendment auditors. If you are not a purveyor of social media, then you are better off. I don’t consume that much Social but somehow fell into the trance of watching people trainwreck themselves from folks loosely disguised as being champions for the first amendment.

I was admitting my guiltiness to my friend Beems and found he also was hooked on this. For those of you are not yet addicted, basically these defenders of freedom of speech bring giant professional cameras and start filming anyone and everyone. They go by and into all sorts of public places like this one by a father and son team (great bonding) at the post office with a lady getting pepper sprayed, police departments and city hall. They film outside of restaurants, jewelry stores, banks….you name it. The more hoity toity the area like this one in Vail with a baby getting slammed, the more rage reactions they get. The auditors also have their fans who worship their vigor for the constitution. But here is the rub. Without someone getting aggravated and all nutty on them – the viewership isn’t that interesting. We watch for someone going postal and getting into a quarrel. The auditor tells people at the post office who ask him to stop filming their pamphlets and the workers to read “Poster 7” which gives them the right to film in public. The auditor says he has a purpose to be there – which is to buy a 65-cent stamp. When people try to walk away the auditor eggs them and shouts, “follow orders, bye-bye, see ya later, off you go, go home and lick your wounds, you made a mistake, carry on, calm down and Toodle-oo!”

These “auditors” use a lot of psychological warfare to get people to react and they know what to say to pour gasoline on the fire. That gets clicks and Youtube pays them handsomely. It’s a living I guess.

Every industry uses psychology in different ways. My wife is an LMHC and uses psychology in its most pure form to help people. Realtors use psychology in sales & communication in different ways. The golden rule of psychology in real estate is that the Realtor works for the client. A Realtor has 9 different duties including loyalty, confidentiality, and obedience (which sounds like something out of the 1950’s). These duties mean that anything your Realtor says to you is only meant to help you.

1. Price

Often a Seller gets stuck on a list price and an offer price that they don’t like. I can’t blame them as if I was selling, I’d be the same way. I go through various strategies of why to list at a certain number or why an offer might be good. But psychology for the benefit of my client comes into play by having my client come up with the answer. For instance, I’ll ask if you are searching for a car, what price range would you look at? If they say $70,000-$80,000 then they then have answered the question of why they should be priced at $79,000 and not $82,000. If they themselves were searching for a home and it was priced at $820,000, it wouldn’t be found in their own search of $700,000-$800,000. If I merely tell them that, then it doesn’t break through.

2. Staging

Telling people what to do in staging is like the auditor telling someone matter of factly that they are just videotaping life as it comes to them. It’s true but people will get angry at that. People ask if all the Maga stuff or liberal paraphernalia should be put away? My answer is if Hunter Biden or Don Jr came in and was going to pay you top dollar, would you pass on it it? My job is to show you the money! When it comes to the closet, it’s an overwhelming experience to get rid of clothes or organize it. Humor here also works. I’ll talk to the organized spouse when they ask if there is anything to do and mention the plastic orange and mint green hangers along with mismatched colors. I can’t simply tell them to organize it.

Or take a cluttered room. Rather than tell people to move furniture out of the way, I say, “lets take a field trip to the front door”. We get on our tippy toes to see what it’s like for a 6-foot person and squat down to see what a 5-foot person’s viewpoint is. Once they see for themselves that the view of the patio/pool or lake is being blocked, it’s much easier for them to move forward to do what needs to be done.

3. Showings

On showings, our obedience and loyalty and confidentiality is out the window. We are not your bosom buddy (another Tom Hanks reference). I’ll double up showings to create angst of competition. I’ll say, “come back on Sunday when we have the open house” in order to take away the home they are in.

If we are representing a home with a western exposure, we will talk about the sunsets. But I’ll also ask what else the customer is looking at. If I find it’s our competitors with an eastern exposure, I’ll make sure to mention that they’ll never get an ounce of sun on their pool and the grandkids won’t come down to visit. Yes – we are vicious in planting seeds on behalf of our clients!

4. Negotiations

In representing a Buyer, we just send over the inspection report with 7 words. Our version of Poster 7. “Please find the inspection report. Thank you.” Those 7 short words create a state of panic for the listing agent and then for the Seller. Nobody quite knows what it means. The reason to do that is to let the Seller go through stages of anger – grief – loss. If we stated demands right away, there hasn’t been enough time to digest misery and demise. Letting a Seller go through the phases warms up the first round of negotiations.

Another psychology piece is the silent treatment. Like not calling back right away. Now on this, one must read the room and be careful. If used properly it can cause people to move in negotiations without our client making a counteroffer. I get some complaints from other agents that our agents are not getting back to them. That means we are doing our job in the negotiations!

I hope that I have given you some insight on methods of psychology in real estate. Hopefully, you are like my Grandpa Gerald and won’t get addicted to the Amendment Agitator fools. I hope this Jeff’s Journal gave you some smiles as Jason, the Amagansett Press auditor would say. I do appreciate you. And with that I’ll use my 1^st amendment right to say, Toodle-oo!