Real estate broker Leigh Thomas Brown outlines five ways agents can handle client blame during high-stress transactions. Listen without judgment, depersonalize the anger as stress release, stay accessible, shift from emotion to logic by laying out options, and involve your broker or attorney if things escalate. Your job includes absorbing and managing client emotions so they can refocus on closing.
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How do you handle it when you get blamed for things that were completely out of your control? Well, welcome to real estate and welcome to the giant part of our job as real estate professionals that is nowhere listed in license law and nobody talked to you about it in your pre-licensing class. And frankly, that first broker whose training class you landed in didn't talk to you about this whole blame game, guilt-ridden part of our business. But you should know It's one of the most important things that a REALTOR® professional does for their clients is absorb all of that emotion, all of the lack of control, all of the drama that takes place usually in those last 48 hours before closing when all of the blush is off the rose. I mean, you think about it, you looked at the house on the internet, Mr. Buyer, and it looked perfect. You loved it. Your agent took you to look at it and you said, I mean, pretty close to the photos. Because the listing agent is paid to make the house look great. So you decided you would go ahead and write an offer. Your agent helped you pull together the comps, did all the research, got your offer prepared, and you won. And then you go through the stressful part of the inspections and the appraisal and the loan process and the survey. Oh my gosh, there's fungal growth in the crawl space. And your agent said, "I got you, boo. We'll get somebody off the vendor list to give us a quote. We'll be all right." And you make it through all of these hiccups and hurdles. You've got your movers hired, you've got the utilities in your name, and then something goes haywire. And in fact, one of those somethings that goes haywire is often the home seller not thinking about the time frame involved to get their own movers and get their stuff out of the house so that you as the buyer get the chance to see it in vacant condition. That is just one of the things that can happen. So the seller decides they're not ready to move out yet, and the buyer comes unglued. And here's the thing, my REALTOR® friends, the buyer's only person on whom to come unglued is you. They don't want to talk to their parents about what's happening in real estate, especially if they have aging parents. They can't tell their friends because their friends are perfect. Just look at them on Instagram. They can't tell each other because at this point they're not sure they're buying the right house. Can't let the kids see it because the kids are already stressed out about changing schools. And so guess Who gets the brunt? That's you, my friend. They sound like they're blaming you. They're not blaming you. They're trying to get the stress and the frustration out of their own system. And you're the only sounding board they have. Some people want to know why REALTORS® get paid the professional fee they get paid. A lot of it has to do with the management of somebody else's emotions. I mean, people pay great oodles and scads of money to therapists, and not that REALTORS® are therapists, but we operate in a capacity quite often where we are listening. When somebody's blaming to you. All I can say is you've got to shut up and let them get it out of their system. And after they have finished unloading, start talking about what the options are. Your job is not to cast judgment or cast blame or say it must be this and it must be that. Your job is to say, here's option A, here's option B, here's the possible outcomes, and help them go from emotion back to logic so they can get to the next phase of this real estate transaction. I know it's hard. And I know that for you, my favorite REALTOR® professionals, you take it all personally, 'cause you really do like your clients. You really do love 'em. You really do want the very best for them. And it breaks you into a thousand tiny million pieces when they are not happy. But you can't control their stress. You can advise them through it. You can educate them all the way up to it. But the most important thing you do when they are coming unglued on you, be available. Let them get ahold of you on the phone and by text and by email and in front of them if possible. And let them know that you hear them. You're irritated too. You're frustrated too, because quite often the frustrations are so far out of your control because they live on the other side of the transaction. And frankly, for anybody out there who wonders why in the world you have an agent for the buyer and an agent for the sellers, this, friends, is one of the absolute biggest reasons. It's because that agent acts as a buffer to absorb the emotion so that the buyer and the seller can get refocused on what Option A looks like and what Option B looks like so that they can figure out the best possible solution. Frankly, most of the time, the best possible solution is for the buyer to figure out how to move forward and for the seller to figure out how to move forward, because that's what they really intended at the beginning of this process. But the emotion, once it flares up, we get to help dissipate it. Now, I will tell you, in my 24 years in the business, there's a lot of times I have gotten cussed up and down the country by somebody who's completely stressed out. And then they call back and they say, I'm so sorry. And I say, it's okay, honey, it's good. I understand completely. And you have to let it out of your system so that we can figure out the plan. That's what we're here for. So when you are worried about how to manage somebody else's situation, and they're yelling at you, you've got to depersonalize and let them talk to you. Now, if they stay mad at you, well, bring your broker into the conversation. That's what we're here for. That's my job as a managing broker is to hear somebody else out if they need to start climbing the ladder and, and let it off. Because our goal at the end of the day is the preservation of somebody's American dream, whether it's the buyer's preservation of moving forward on this one, or they really do want to pull up stakes and we've got to connect them to the right attorneys. Same thing with the seller. That's what we're here for. It's what we do. And I know it's a hard part of your job. But you know what, we're compensated for handling a really hard job. And the best part is almost every time, once we get past these stressful moments and get to closing, we get a giant hug and a thank you. Because what people really do want is a successful transaction. Now, if you have a question, you're trying to figure out how to process something, ask it below, send me a DM, and most importantly, click the bell and come hang out with me.
