Close friends and family are the hardest to sell to (My Story)

A wise man named Jack Ma once said, 'When Selling to close friends and family, no matter how much you're selling to them, they will always feel you're earning their money, no matter how cheap you sell to them, they still wouldn't appreciate it.

I got a first taste on this today from an old friend of mine but i'm not selling her anything in this case. I'm just offering a service to help her selling her house because she's currently in another country. What happened was a few months ago she text me in a fine evening asking whether i'm interested in helping her to sell off her house which is around 15 miles away from my house. I told her that it's better to get a house agent/broker for this kind of things because i'm not familiar with it. She said she doesn't really trust giving her keys to strangers and she would rather pay me the commission than any other strangers. I trust her as a friend and take her words on it so i agree to help her to put her house on the market to sell.

Our local house agent/broker usually will charge 2-3% on the final sale price of the house and if for example the owner of the house is looking for 320K and he manage to sell the house for 350K. The agent will then take the 30K difference from the owner as his commission as well. My friend asked me to sell her house for 320K and i told her that i would help her to sell it at the highest possible price and i won't take the extra as commission because she's a friend. I told her that i would only take 2% and that's all. She agreed.

So weeks pass and i brought a couple of interested buyer to view the house like any other agent would. I need to stop my work and drive around 15 miles just to show people the house but i never complained about it because i'm trying to help a friend out and she's paying me 2%. I got offers ranging from 300K-340K for the house but i wasn't very happy with it because i want to sell it at a higher price so that my friend wouldn't lost so much. So i keep on trying to look for new buyers for the house with higher offer.

Each week i will update my friend about how many buyers who are interested and how much they are offering. She just told me that she's happy as long as it's more than 320K. She sounded so nice at first telling me that she doesn't want to trouble me so much and she's willing to sell it at a lower price. I'm those sort of people who will treat you even better if you're nice to me. So i told her that i will find her a good buyer with a good price. I could have just sold it for 320K and make a quick commission on this but i didn't. 7 weeks pass and finally i found a buyer who is willing to pay 360K for the house. I was so happy that i finally found someone who is willing to pay so much over what my friend had expected. So i quickly called my friend and told her about it. She was shocked because i manage to sell it at a high price but things start to turn bad from there. When i mention about the 2% commission i'm going to get. Her reaction was.... Are you going to charge me commission? I forgot i ever said that i'm going to give you. I was so disappointed when she said that like i'm trying to scam her. I told her that she told me she's going to give me 2% for this deal. She just said "Oh.. did i? i forgot".

Money is not the only issue here. I'm angry that she just pretends that she never said that before and made me look like i'm trying to scam her. So i asked her whether she still wants to sell the house? she said yes. So i contacted the buyer arranging all the procedure and when to pay the deposit for the house. The very next morning i call her asking for her details so i could arrange for a lawyer to do the documents. My friend tells me that she's not selling the house to the buyer anymore and telling me excuses like her friend wants to buy the house from her. She told me that her friend left her a message last week and only this morning she saw that message. Coincidence? Just after i told her i finally found her a buyer. So i asked her how much is her friend offering, she said 340K. Really?? she's selling her friend for 340K and lost 20K compared to my buyer. I just told her that she wasted nearly 2 months of my time and effort. She never even feel sorry about it. I learnt it the hard way... time wasted.. petrol wasted. But the saddest part is.. losing a friend. I won't look at her the same way anymore after this incident.

So what Jack Ma said is quite true in this case. Lesson learned.