The Katelayna Insider

Real Estate Doesn’t Have an Off Switch

Before I left town to spend some time with family in the middle of nowhere in Northern Minnesota, one of my listings received an offer. That same day, another agent reached out and told me their buyers were interested and planned to submit an offer the following day.

I let them know I would be out of town, but that I’d be watching for it. Sure enough, the second offer came in while I was up north. Now my sellers had two offers to consider, both with response deadlines that day, and we needed to figure out the best move for them.

By the time we were heading home, we had a decision and a counteroffer to write. So there I was in the passenger seat, laptop out, writing a counteroffer on the drive back from Northern Minnesota.

This is one of those parts of real estate that most people never see. Agents are never really off.

We take trips. We make plans with our families. We have weekends and holidays and places we’d rather not bring our laptops. But real estate doesn’t always cooperate with the schedule. Offers come in when they come in, deadlines don’t move because you’re out of town, and sometimes negotiations need to happen right now.

That doesn’t mean agents shouldn’t have lives or boundaries. We absolutely should. But when something important is happening for a client, a good agent finds a way to show up when it matters.

That’s also something worth remembering when you choose who represents you. There’s a lot more to this job than opening doors, putting a sign in a yard or sending paperwork for signatures. Your agent is negotiating for you, watching deadlines, communicating behind the scenes and handling problems as they come up. A lot of that work happens at incredibly inconvenient times, and most clients will never know about half of it.

So get yourself an agent who will work for you when it counts. And when you have an agent who answers the phone on a weekend, works through dinner, changes their plans or writes your counteroffer from the passenger seat on the way home from the Northwoods, remember that agents work hard at some pretty inconvenient times.

Sometimes the job comes with a desk.



Sometimes the desk is the passenger seat.