Love Letters

Buyers desperate for a home often like to send the sellers a "love letter," explaining who they are and why they love the home.  If you've ever received one, then you know how touching these letters can be.  Unfortunately, the powers that be have put the kibosh on them, so they're going away.  In this episode, we explain why.

hello my little friends out there my little pickle friends pickle peeps randall and diane bro that’s right and we are here today to chat with you uh kind of a new development something that the arizona department of real estate has brought up and honestly never thought of i never thought about but it makes good sense and it’s what we call love letters so a lot of buyers are looking to do love letters now as you may know bitty wars yeah we’ve got a lot of bidding wars it’s been really hard to find uh properties across the country we are having historic lows in inventory uh which makes it hard as fire right not just us all over the united states all over everybody’s running across the same thing so everyone’s trying to yeah so everyone’s trying to differentiate themselves so obviously if you just give a lot of cash then you are likely to win cash is king but nobody wants to flush money down the toilet so they try to differentiate themselves in other ways that’s right so they’ll say you know what can i just write a letter from my heart about how much this home means to me and what this neighborhood means to me what this town means to me and in the olden days i would say sure i love that i think that’s very touching uh sellers like to receive that go for it however the arizona department of real estate and i think nationally as well now the national association of realtors has decided that love letters are a no-go anymore and uh they really would rather realtors not encourage that practice because it can go against fair housing yeah it’s a fair housing and explain mr brown why it can go against well a very obvious sort of thing uh might be that let’s say you have a buyer who’s jewish and they write a love letter to the seller that says oh i love the location of the house it’s right around they don’t mention they’re jewish but they mentioned oh you’re it’s wonderful your house is right around the corner from the synagogue well let what happens if that person’s offer isn’t accepted now it may not be accepted because the price isn’t right or you know it could be not accepted for any any number of things but it opens up the possibility that the buyer will say oh you know they didn’t take my offer because obviously they knew i was jewish and that becomes anti-semitic and obviously subject to fair housing right so it’s it’s primarily a liability thing a potential lifestyle and i think for some people too like if they say hey i have a family i’m so excited to move here um and maybe this neighborhood doesn’t want kids and the owner you know they may say well you didn’t choose me because you don’t want kids in this neighborhood which by the way is protected children and families are protected correct if you are a seller and somebody comes with children you can’t deny them the right to buy the home because they’re a family absolutely part of fair housing there are a number of things under fair housing yes the jewish thing excuse me the jewish thing was maybe more a lot more common is my kids love the house right you know and and that kind of thing and so anything with religion families and handicapped races if you even make the slightest uh connection uh and and you try to write about that in your letter and the seller chooses someone else it opens the door for the people who were not chosen to say well was it because i had a family yeah was it because i practice a certain religion that you don’t like was it because and it opens up the door to a lot of possible uh lawsuits yeah and so by the way we really don’t see all we don’t really see that no it really doesn’t happen people are very accepting here people are super accepting and super it’s it’s a liability thing the brokers don’t want to spend their days reading all these love letters uh and to be honest the sellers have gotten very jaded and a lot of sellers are like you know what i’ve actually had this uh some of the listings we’ve had the sellers are like i really i don’t want to be swayed i don’t want to hear any of the stories please don’t give me any of these letters i need to just make this decision almost like a business decision they don’t want to attach emotion to it yeah so we thought we’d talk about this with you so you would understand what’s kind of going on with the national association of realtors and where they’re coming from on this ruling yeah and also to let you know some of the sellers perspective they’re like look business is business i don’t want to be swayed i don’t want to hear any sob stories about a widow or you know or anything like that yeah and um well the pickle has kind of an inside track on that so i will tell you our secret so when we send in your offer on the home uh the pickle lady does a cover letter to the agent and in that cover letter she will mention things that may sway them towards you i try i mean well being a veteran is an obvious one well and without being overly we have to be careful yeah you can’t be too soppy because as you know the if the sellers are getting seven love letters after a while they kind of we’ll try to mention a few little tidbits nothing nothing extreme um but when we explain to you when you come in and you’re like i want to win this bid because as we know there’s tons of uh bidding wars going on and we say to you i’m so sorry we can’t do a love letter please understand it’s not us it’s new rulings it’s uh kind of a changing tide so to speak a turning of the tide and uh that’s where it’s coming from it’s not an us thing yeah it’s just um i remember things are changing we were selling our home uh in texas and uh that’s where we we raised our family and when we sold it we got a love letter from a young family it’s very touchy but it’s very nice i it’s very hard for me it’s very hard for me because i love love letters yeah yeah i think they’re cool i think they help the seller connect with the buyer there’s a lot of memories and emotion attached with all homes and love letters help you make that connection i’m personally i’m all for it yeah i don’t make of the rules though no and another one was wonderful things about the past that people people will reminisce about because so don’t shoot the messenger if it were up to me i’d have you be you know writing a beautiful love letter a long long missive whatever it would be it’s amazing i think it’s gorgeous and i think it’s a wonderful way to connect uh however we are precluded now from doing that so we just wanted to share that with you and um i mean i love love letters i have all of my love letters that this one wrote to me i have all the love letters my parents had we were all trying to buy a house from her at some point no my parents i mean i’m i’m a big fan of the written note it’s always lovely to have and you keep it from unfortunately a real estate transaction so just want to share that with you and give you a little bit more understanding of where that’s coming from so that is our little tidbit of the day we hope that you learned something a little bit from that if you’re looking for more information about real estate and all the trends market forces and restaurants and places to eat and things about press kit and i can’t even think all the stuff that we have it’s a lot your search begins at pickle411.com yes our source of information to buyers sellers and everyone in between and if you want after the deal is done you can write us a love letter we always appreciate those we have a lot of very nice letters yeah um i love those letters i love them all all right guys so i hope you understand and we hope to hear from you soon have a great rest of your day bye