Good question - and a few good answers, too.

I do not get involved emotionally.

Mark Don McInnes, Sandpoint most difficult situation is - you do everything for the client and they do not appreciate!

Now this happens intermittently and is client dependent so I can't say it's stopped - however, I have been more cautious about showing them my value as and when I can!

Excellent question Mark Don McInnes, Sandpoint ... The most difficult thing for me is when escrow is thrown under the bus for something they absolutely have no control over and it's not even within their sphere of responsibility. Escrow's job is to be a neutral 3rd party with fiduciary duties to serve both the seller and buyer. Their purpose is to ensure the seller receives sales price, the buyer gets clear title, and the lender's security interest in the property is protected.

Escrow acts upon written instructions, there must be a document. Yet many are inclined to blame escrow for 'I meant to call you about this but...' you didn't and because the inspection failed, the lender changed its mind in the 11th hour, we should have known that something wasn't recorded, there's a divorce in progress, a death, we're getting married, the sellers husband is currently serving a sentence in prison and won't respond, a 2nd cousin has an unrecorded claim on title because his aunt had an affair with and they promised her a share and she left it to said 2nd cousin but not by public record to support it, the buyers husband/wife is overseas on a secret military mission and cannot be contacted, the listing agent with a super AA+ personality wants to rule over the transaction and barks orders, "Make it so!" The buyer's agent demands we have to close this afternoon and it's already 2:30 pm and we don't have loan docs... etc. etc. etc.

I've been privy to so many of these wonderful war stories over the years. They are so amazingly amazing and when I retire...........

I more than appreciate the wonderful escrow closer soldiers I've worked with through the years and their challenges. Life isn't getting worse, but our online world seems to drive an ADHD behavior where many think you should just be able to click a button and 24/7/365 everything will happen instantly... The industry doesn't work that way. The sources are so local, city, county, state, federal, etc., we're simply not there yet. It's not like shopping on Amazon.com

Mark, thanks for this post... Obviously you got me going. So much education needs to always be happening about what our roles our....

I find it hard to deal with sellers that bought their houses through me and had them several years and now when they sell they will be short. I feel a responsibility to help them through it and wonder if I should have helped them get a better deal when they bought. This always has bothered me and I will be meeting with a seller on Monday that is in that exact situation. It is hard to get excited about a listing like that. I have so much empathy.

I agree with you Gabe, but one of the problems that i see is that most loan officer i work with dont care about the close of escrow they think is easy to get extension from sellers, and the worst  ones are the ones that work for the big banks. it breaks me because i know what they should be doing .

When I get a young couple looking at their first home only to find out right after we got our offer accepted that one of the lost a job and now do not qualify

Although it usually balances out by the end of the year, the peaks and the valleys are the hardest thing for me. The answer is to increase the volume of people I deal with to make my business more consistent; I'm working on it!

Handling must-sell properties for friends. Always lots of emotion. 

The ups and downs are for me, always the hardest part of the business.

Best to keep emotions out of real estate, however I do try to get the other party to act on their emotions.

Short sale?

Hi, Mark...that is a loaded question. I guess rejection is difficult. You know what you don't get the listing, or a buyer decides to work with someone else. 

The one thing that I need to overcome is the dreaded "Cold Calling".

When people don't do their jobs it makes your job 10 times harder.  I just had one close in December that was awful.  The lender a couple of days before close asked for the buyers paper work like they were just starting their loan even though I had been texting and calling all through the process and they said everything was in and in final underwriting.  The listing agent was slow and didn't guide her sellers to complete repairs in a timely manner.  We closed only a few days late but what an unnessary horrendous stressful time.