I had been waiting for a reply for three months, and finally, with much pain, I received the email.
A neighbor who was planning to sell his house agreed to show it to my wife and me.
We had heard through word of mouth that a woman across the street was planning to use a real estate agent to list her home on the MLS. After receiving an email introduction, she said she was happy to have an interest in her home and at least wanted to see it before putting it on the market.
Over the next four months, I gained deeper insight into the daily work that Inman readers, the real estate professionals who run our industry, do for a living.
We consider ourselves one of the lucky ones.
We moved to Salt Lake City in 2017. At that time, it was cheaper to buy a regular home than rent. After three years, the interest rate was locked at 2.875% and I thought I was ready.
But with two more kids, remote work becoming a reality, and a deeper sense of what we wanted in a community, we decided to sell our home and rent a home in our ideal neighborhood.
Taylor Anderson | Inman reporter and Utah sales agent
It felt like a gamble and made my family question our sanity. Would anyone trade historically low interest rates for an interest rate starting in 6? Why gamble away with homeownership?
Truth be told, we knew that a conditional offer wouldn’t be suitable for a large house in an area where we wanted to stay long-term. So we embarked on a plan to sell and hide our stock and establish ourselves as valued members of our new community.
At the same time, I embarked on a new journey.
After putting the kids to bed on a warm summer night, I returned to my office in my three-car garage and began taking an online course to become a licensed real estate sales agent in Utah.
As I was on a plane to visit family in Chicago on Christmas Eve, I received an email. I passed the exam, the background check and fingerprinting were completed, and the Utah Department of Real Estate issued my license.
As an Inman reporter covering the industry’s largest securities firms, it could be considered a conflict of interest to tip my hat to the companies I write about. Therefore, I kept my license inactive and did not partner with any intermediaries.
By this point, my wife and I had probably visited over 99.9 percent of the agents in the entire state of Utah at our local MLS.
At around 8 a.m. in early January, the listing went live and within a minute I called the listing agent.
“I didn’t even know it was live yet,” my agent told me. It was a phrase I would hear from three other agents within just a few weeks.
I’ve heard agents compare Salt Lake City’s late winter/early spring market to the height of the coronavirus housing market. Homes are listed on Thursdays, with or without an open house, and descriptions are updated mid-week with the familiar phrase, “Multiple offers. Best and best delivery date is Monday.”
In each house, I played a combination of agent, home buyer, and investigative reporter.
I followed my own due diligence checklist to manage the home, checking permit history, zoning, age next to sewer, and ownership. Then, call the listing agent for more information.
If I hadn’t been looking for a forever home to raise my kids and had a self-imposed deadline of June 1st to get it done before my lease was up, it might have felt like a game. Otherwise we will be detained for another year.
In total, we made four offers, some of which went way beyond what we asked for, and each was optimized with the seller’s wishes in mind to the point where we figured out why it wasn’t working.
The key to my strategy to compete and win in a competitive market was to not ask for any buyer agent fees. I thought if I went above and beyond the request and added an extra 2-3% for the seller’s profit, I would definitely win.
After the fourth loss, we managed to put things together.
As an unrepresented buyer, I recognized the risks for the seller and potential future headaches for the listing agent. Additionally, the seller likely agreed to give the agent more compensation if the buyer was not represented.
So even though I was treated seriously and respectfully throughout this process, I was losing out. And being a competitive person with a real deadline approaching, I had to change my approach again.
We temporarily worked with a discount broker for two reasons.
First, two of the houses we offered on required us to add a basement apartment to make the monthly payments bearable. (Remember, we were swinging to hit a home run and level up to our forever home.) Receiving a check for 1.5 percent of the home price would have helped us achieve that.
Second, I wanted to experience this first-hand as an agent. I found someone who essentially solved my BAC problem and also appreciated that I was ready and willing to take charge throughout the transaction.
We made one offer to the agent before lightning struck. He was great to work with.
After three months of relative silence from her neighbors, she opened her door.
I mean it literally.
She was traveling and could not be heard from for a while, and was deeply saddened by the loss of her loved one.
All the while she was thinking.
She has sold homes on and off market before. As she prepared to sell the house, she met with three agents. While speaking to us in her living room in April, she said she didn’t feel a “vibe” with any of them.
She decided she was going to accept the offer and not use an agent and gave us a price range.
She blended into the neighborhood, so I knew she had a good range. She also knew that if she put the house on the market, there would be a frenzy and she would probably lose.
At that point, the transaction no longer feels fully transactional.
We spent nearly two hours wandering through the house, listening to her tell stories about the land, the landscape, and the decades of life that unfolded there. She said she wanted to bring the children back into the house. She talked about her neighbors and her community. She appreciated knowing not only how much they would pay, but also who would live there.
And all the while, I was using a chatbot of my choice (ChatGPT at the time). The chatbot was also a strategist and guidance counselor throughout the process.
The bot advised patience when I wouldn’t have had patience otherwise.
This allowed us to workshop sensitive emails and texts to avoid sounding overly aggressive or transactional while still moving the deal forward. It helped us think about timing, financing mechanisms, valuation risks, ownership dates, etc.
Once the price list arrives, the bot analyzes the short-term and long-term impact of each option. The document will be sent and rechecked before being signed. At one point, it helped me decide on the order to move my two young children across the street, and there was virtually no room for error.
The most interesting thing was that the bot often slowed me down instead of speeding me up.
There were moments when I wanted more answers, another follow-up, or clarity on timing. Instead, the chatbot repeatedly advised restraint, patience, and cooperation.
It turned out to be important.
The seller ultimately accepted our offer with a clear and easy process that worked well for her.
The inspection went smoothly. The seller proactively offered to pay for radon mitigation if elevated radon levels were found. We directly coordinated the timing, ownership, and logistics of the move. The final agreement gave her a few days after closing to complete the movers’ packing and loading before ownership passed to us.
I didn’t trust the bot to analyze prices. At least for now, I don’t have access to the most accurate data to help me pinpoint reliable numbers. These are only available through MLS.
Despite how this may sound, ChatGPT is not meant to replace the role of a real estate professional.
I still needed to do the following:
Assess risk, build trust, and align timelines. Understand contracts under pressure, communicate clearly, and make decisions with real financial impact.
What changed was that there was virtually an ongoing strategic sounding board to help consider every step of the process.
Some people may think that both the seller and I have made many mistakes.
Maybe I could have made more money if I had worked with an agent. Maybe I paid too much. Perhaps we both took unnecessary risks.
All I know is that the papers have been signed, closing costs have been paid, financing and documentation has been completed, and I’m writing this from my dream home.
The future is here. Agents need to be careful.
Email Taylor Anderson
