An Empathetic Approach to Real Estate

One other detail that our top producers emphasized was that of empathy, and of going above and beyond to show that you care for your clients and their decisions.

Blass achieves that by offering an all-encompassing, one-stop-shop service for her clients, with an extensive referral base for all their needs.

“I try to take the stress off [my clients] by doing as much as I can,” Blass says. “I have every vendor they may need, whether it be painting to get the house ready or movers to get them moved; they are inexpensive, but good professionals for the job. I make myself invaluable.”

Blass shares a telling anecdote: her daughter’s wedding was on a Saturday, and she received a phone call for a listing appointment that Friday. Knee-deep in wedding preparations, Blass was unable to personally visit the client’s home, but she referred the client to her list of vendors, so that by Monday, when Blass did visit, nearly half the work was already completed on the house and she was not three days behind schedule.

What ultimately counts, Blass explains, is approaching each client with respect and empathy for their unique dispositions.

“I deal with people who have to move for financial reasons; I deal with people who have to move because they have been relocated, but they don’t want to move; everyone has their own story, and you have to feel for them and know what the right way is to handle them,” she says. “I have a client now who is dying. I was crying when I was at their house the other day, it’s so sad. Everyone is different, and you have to treat them differently.”

And for Knapp, that embrace of difference, and the client happiness it yields, is the very philosophy for why he works in real estate.

“If you have the characteristic where you want to please somebody, and you want to find out the answer to their problems, and you want to make them happy throughout the transaction, then you’re going to be good at real estate,” Knapp says. “People will acknowledge that.”