Sometimes I don’t feel old enough to have been doing this as long as I have, but here I am!

I guess after this long, you gain wisdom.  Or superstition.  Either way, you begin to recognize patterns that help you advise your clients.

Here are a handful of things that always are a sign of what is to come:

1.  The longer it takes to receive an offer decreases the chance of it arriving.  I can’t tell you how many times I will have an excited realtor call to tell me their client is going to make an offer, then it never shows up.  In the old days, I would immediately tell my client we were getting on offer.  Now I tell them once I have received it.
2. When an agent schedules a showing several days in advance, odds are they will cancel.  This is one I have never figured out, but always seems to happen.  An agent might schedule a showing 3-4 days in advance, and then cancel it for no reason the day before the showing.  Always a bummer.
3. When you get an offer and the buyer is wanting a lot of the sellers personal items, it is a sign that the buyer is going to be difficult.  When I see furniture, gas grills or such listed on a contract and they were not offered, it always means it is going to be a tough deal.
4. The bigger the gap between the list price and the offer amount lessens the odds of both parties reaching an agreement.  Usually one or both parties get so mad at each other that they don’t want to work together.

There are several more, but these 4 are the biggest ones.