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For Victoria’s top luxury female agent, Sarah Case, building relationships based on honesty and trust has been key to her referral-driven success in an industry often perceived as lacking transparency.
Leading real estate agent, Sarah Case, has joined REB’s Emilie Lauer to discuss how building positive relationships with clients has fuelled her success, selling more than $350 million in property annually.
Case, director of sales strategy at RT Edgar, said her relationships with clients are built on respect and transparency, generating numerous referrals to fuel the business.
She said relationships are built on multiple levels – with vendors, prospective buyers, and other key industry players.
“It’s all about relationships and how you treat your vendors, and we end up having a very intense relationship,” Case said.
“I pride myself on doing such a good job that when they do go to sell or a friend of theirs wants to sell, I’m the first person that they think of, and I hope that is still the case,” she said.
“I want them to say, ‘Gee, Sarah and her team did a fantastic job’.”
According to Case, building a good relationship with clients starts with honesty, a word she doesn’t shy away from despite being told it was not used in the industry.
“I worked for someone many years ago who said you should never use the word honesty in real estate because people won’t believe you,” she said.
Case disregarded the advice and held firm in her belief that honesty and real estate can co-exist, maintaining that an agent’s role is to use their market knowledge to educate their client.
“At the end of the day, real estate agents, like ourselves, are not purchasing the home; it is the buyers,” she said.
“So you need to present vendors with the information as best and as honestly as you possibly can as to why you think the value is in their house.”
However, Case admitted that there may have been times when she was “too honest”.
Sometimes, her honest and direct discussions with vendors about their property values have resulted in her missing a commission.
“Last year was a tough six months because I think I was too honest in a lot of my talking to the vendors,” she said.
She added that another downside to maintaining honesty is the difficulty in delivering unpleasant news to clients, as often their property isn’t worth the amount they were expecting.
“Having those discussions with the vendors, such as: I’m sorry, your house is not worth what it was in COVID; it’s not worth what your neighbour sold it for, even though yours is renovated or slightly better, and these are the reasons why.”
“Most of the time I was right, and the property did sell for what I said, but I missed the commission and I missed the listing and the other agent talked the vendor down, which I don’t like doing,” she said.
However, Case said she ultimately did not regret how she approached these discussions as she held onto her values and pledge for transparency.
“After I lost probably more properties than I had previously in the last 10 years, I got to sleep at night and I felt comfortable with my decision and the way I approached it,” she said.
“I honestly wouldn’t change a thing on the way I approached it because I did the right thing by me and by the vendor,” she concluded.
Listen to the full conversation here.
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