Best Practices
By Jim Palmer Jr.

For over 100 years Realtors® have diligently worked to conform to the best business practices of the times. Even the term, Best Practices suggests that such methods are continually evolving and improving.  Those business practices include many aspects of real estate marketing and transaction management practices, but more importantly include the development and use of Purchase Agreement forms and addenda (the legal mumbo jumbo) that help clarify purchase contracts in order to reduce litigation and avoid conflicts.

One example of that evolution is the change to specify the remedy for damages (in the case of a default by one party or the other) that now virtually eliminates or severely limits the conflicts over who gets the Earnest Money.  Those are the conflicts that routinely give managing brokers gray hair.

According to Wikipedia, “a best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means.”  The use and evolution of our state-of-art forms and the practices they specify fit this definition exactly! 

Having served on the Forms Committee of the regional association of Spokane Realtors® for many years, I have witnessed firsthand the tedious committee work and the grueling process of creating new forms to suit a certain purpose, including the revision of already-tried-and-tested forms that just needed adjustments.  All of those revisions come from experience in the trenches of the real estate business or because of some conflict or litigation that caused brokers to rethink the status quo. 

When you use a Realtor® you have the ability to take advantage of the best practices available in the real estate industry.  Such practices reflect the total of wisdom garnered in over 100 years experience with thousands of Realtors® doing tens-of-thousands of transactions.  That wisdom may be taken for granted by many consumers who just don’t think about that aspect of real estate very much. That sort of attitude may be forgivable to the naïve consumer, but it is a real shame when Realtors® themselves don’t fully appreciate or use the best practices available, whether from laziness or ignorance. 
 
When you are assured your Realtor® has the expertise to always use techniques that produce superior results, your confidence can wax strong even if a tough transaction tries your patience and wearies your soul.  That attribute in a Realtor® is what we call “The Trust Edge.”