{"id":3356,"date":"2009-10-06T09:36:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T13:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2009-10-06T09:36:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T13:36:45","slug":"keeping-secrets-in-real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/06\/keeping-secrets-in-real-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Secrets in Real Estate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/TheInformantBillboard_NewYorkCity.jpg\" alt=\"TheInformantBillboard_NewYorkCity\" title=\"The Informant; Billboard in New York City\" align=left hspace='6' class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3362\" \/>Real estate agents often have access to a lot of personal information about people that they don&#8217;t necessarily want shared with others.  For example, sometimes people call me because they are getting a divorce.  They want to sell their home, but they don&#8217;t want anyone to know why they&#8217;re moving.  Other people are in the process of a job search and would like to be ready to move quickly if the right opportunity comes along, but obviously don&#8217;t want others to know that they&#8217;re interviewing for new jobs.  Finally, some people are purchasing a home and don&#8217;t necessarily want others to know they&#8217;re buying until the sale is closed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I take the phrase &#8220;loose lips sink ships&#8221; to heart.  When people are confident enough in me to share personal information, they should feel reassured that it&#8217;s not going any further than me.<\/strong>  I respect their confidentiality and am glad they see me as a trustworthy individual.  It is not my place to be sharing anyone&#8217;s personal business with others.  I am happy to share facts when they are made publically available, but that&#8217;s about it.  I will tell you a house is under contract when it&#8217;s under contract.  I will tell you the sale price once the property has closed.  And I can tell you the name of who appears on the deed when it&#8217;s recorded at town hall.  But that&#8217;s really about it.<\/p>\n<p>Neighbors are often curious as to what&#8217;s going on with real estate in their neighborhood.  I see this at open houses all of the time.  Typically I&#8217;m asked about another property in the neighborhood that I, or someone else, has under contract.  They want to know how much the house sold for or who&#8217;s buying it.  None of that information can be disclosed until the sale is finalized.  It is my job to keep that information confidential, but neighbors sometimes have a hard time with that.  They want to know who&#8217;s moving in next door.  I always politely decline and just say &#8220;You&#8217;ll just have to wait a few weeks to find out.  Be sure to welcome them with some cookies!&#8221;  They usually laugh at that comment and respect that I can&#8217;t tell them any more information at that point.<\/p>\n<p>In real estate, your reputation is everything.  One quality of a good real estate agent is trustworthiness.  Maintaining confidentiality is one component of earning peoples trust and something that I take seriously.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How has a real estate agent earned your trust?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Real estate agents often have access to a lot of personal information about people that they don&#8217;t necessarily want shared with others. For example, sometimes people call me because they are getting a divorce. They want to sell their home, but they don&#8217;t want anyone to know why they&#8217;re moving. Other people are in the process of a job search and would like to be ready to move quickly if the right opportunity comes along,<\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a class=\"myButt three\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/06\/keeping-secrets-in-real-estate\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1568,1591],"tags":[1917,2712],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buying","category-selling","tag-confidentiality","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybergquist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}