Over the years in real estate there are times when you’re asked to lie by sellers. It usually involves actively keeping the fact that the seller is selling their property from their tenants. The supposed reason for this deception is so that the tenant doesn’t get alarmed and immediately make plans to move out. But is this really a serious concern or just a false assumption?
We’ve got an upcoming showing where we’ve been asked to keep the true purpose for inspecting their home a secret. In our discussion about the appointment Matthew showed me an interesting article on challenging assumptions. In the article an experiment is described where 5 monkeys are locked in a room where a banana sits at the top of a ladder. When any of the monkeys tries to climb the ladder for the banana the entire group is sprayed with ice water. Gradually the monkeys learn to keep each other from trying for the banana at all and avoiding getting sprayed. One by one new monkey’s are swapped out and when they try for the banana the experienced ones in the group attack to stop him from activating to ice water spray. Eventually all the monkey’s are replaced with ones that have never been sprayed, but they all still fear climbing the ladder as they’ve been taught by each other.
How real is this fear of tenants leaving should they discover they’re home is being sold? It feels like a lie we’ve been taught to keep us fearful of an uncertain outcome. If you’re honest from the start you can see if the tenant might want to purchase the home themselves. Or by bringing the tenant into the process they could be more cooperative with getting the home shown to potential buyers.
To me it all boils down to treating people as adults and approaching our jobs with honesty. We must challenge these assumptions that chip away at our integrity, or risk creating a world where we constantly lie to each other out of fear. Let’s try not to accept practices that take us away from ourselves, and trust each other enough to keep it real at all times.
Peace.
~Scott
PS. Can you think of any other assumptions we accept without question on a daily basis?