Everyone in real estate knows you need a sense of humor to survive in this business. The clients will sometimes try your patience and you’re sometimes surprised your tongue is still attached at the end of the day after biting it so often.
I referred a couple to Donna a couple years ago. The couple was looking in the Temecula/Murrieta area. I had just closed on a home in Murrieta a few months prior and had vowed to refer out any other people considering that area. I work in Carlsbad and driving up to show one or two homes a couple times a week is not a good idea especially with the cost of gas. Plus, I didn’t know the area very well and I knew Donna did. I knew she’d take excellent care of my clients.
After negotiating a fair referral fee, Donna took my clients over. Mind you, I didn’t know them very well because they were a referral from a friend but I wasn’t concerned because my friend was normal. I had been told that normal friends refer normal people, but I’m here to tell you that’s wrong!
Every once in a while, I’d check-in with Donna to see what was happening with the couple. She was always very positive and upbeat despite the stuff she was telling me they were doing to her like expecting her to drop everything at a moment’s notice to show them a home, calling and texting her at all hours, spending an hour at each home showing going over what they didn’t like about the home and how they’d redecorate it to make it their own.
Talk about patience! Homes that should have been a 15 minute visit (if that) developed into a full episode of HGTV.
Donna ran this way and that showing them everything new and exciting in Temecula and Murrieta for a couple months. She was getting weary of how demanding the woman was. The guy seemed to know what exactly he was married to and was overly nice, but the woman….
She tried to reign them in as best she could but the final straw was after months of going this way and that, and being at their beck and call, Donna told them that she was going away for the weekend. The woman was none too happy but Donna had the couple all set to go with a capable associate. Knowing what I know now, Donna was probably going away just to get away from these people!
The kicker was that although Donna had done everything she could for this couple, while she was gone, the woman wrote her an email saying that she felt that Donna wasn’t serious in her endeavor to find them a home and they had found someone else to represent them.
Donna and I talked endlessly about this particular husband and wife and laughed for so long about all her “adventures” with them. I think we officially renamed the woman Cruella. I apologized nonstop after hearing all they put her through. She just laughed and laughed. Donna had a wonderful take on clients in real estate, and it served her well especially with these two. I think she was more relieved that they were gone than sad to have not earned a commission.
She said, “Sometimes the money just isn’t worth it!!”
I will miss Donna and her lovely laugh but also her funny comments on my Facebook page. I always looked forward to seeing what she had to say in response to whatever I had written, and she never failed to make me LOL.
Rest peacefully, Donna.
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