Why Buyers Go Quiet, and How to Get Unstuck

Sometimes a buyer starts the process and then goes quiet. Normally it is one of a handful of reasons. Here is what we see at Find A Black Agent, and what we normally recommend to get people unstuck.

Life got busy

The first reason is the simplest one. Life got busy for them. Work, family and everything else do not stop because you started looking at homes.

Going quiet is not the same as giving up. Most of the time it just means the home search dropped down the list for a while.

The timing is a little further out

The second reason is timing. Some buyers are a little further out than they first thought. Maybe a lease is ending, or something else needs to happen in their life to make the stars align to purchase a home.

That is a normal place to be. It helps to say it out loud to your agent, because an agent who knows your date can plan around it. An agent who does not know is left guessing why you stopped answering.

Overthinking the money

If it is something financial, sometimes we see that clients are overthinking it, whether it be the down payment, credit or income.

These are real questions. They are also questions that have real answers, and those answers come from a lender. As I explained in What the Best Agents Do in the First 48 Hours, a pre-approval comes from a lender, not from the agent. The lender reviews things like your income, credit and savings and tells you how much they are prepared to lend.

Until that conversation happens, a lot of people are working from guesses. If the down payment is the part on your mind, Saving for a Down Payment is a good place to start.

Go back to your team

What we normally recommend to get people unstuck is to go back to the team that we connected them with. Ask them what, from their perspective, the next best steps are. And ask what you can be doing, both individually and simultaneously, to get unstuck.

Individually means the things only you can do, like gathering the documents a lender asks for. Simultaneously means the things that can move forward at the same time, like your agent setting up a property search while you work on your side.

Our team is more than happy to talk through some of these different options with you as well. What we cannot do is provide specific real estate advice. That is only allowed from the professionals who are licensed in your state. A real estate license is issued by a state, and the rules differ from one state to the next.

Reset and find your place in the process

Buying or selling a home is a process that can take days to months, even years for some people. So the main thing is resetting. Make sure you understand the linear process, figure out where you are in it, and figure out what can be resolved.

Linear means one step follows another. For a buyer, the usual order looks something like this:

• Getting your finances in order and talking with a lender
• A consultation with your agent
• The home search
• An offer and a contract
• The inspection and the appraisal
• Closing

The details differ by state and by situation, and your agent can walk you through how it works where you are buying. Once you know which step you are on, the question gets smaller. It is no longer "am I ready to buy a house?" It is "what needs to be resolved to get to the next step?"

If you are near the beginning, read Before You Start House Hunting, Do This First. And if you have not been introduced to an agent yet, start at findablackagent.com.