The Longest Follow-Up

There is an old client file in our records that tells a story better than almost any sales brochure could.

It doesn't begin with a listing appointment.

It begins with notes.

Lots of them.

A conversation about the value of a house. A rental sign spotted in the yard. A returned calendar because the owners had moved. An email asking for their new address. A neighborhood garage sale. A tenant calling with a question.

Years pass between some of the entries.

And still, the file stays open.

A House—and a Relationship—that Stayed

We originally helped these clients purchase a Huntington Beach home many years ago.

Life eventually took them away from Huntington Beach, but they kept the property as a rental. At different times they considered selling it. We talked about value. We listed it. Offers came in that weren't right for them.

They decided not to sell.

That's an important part of the story.

Real estate agents tend to celebrate the transactions that close. But sometimes serving a client means helping them decide not to do something.

So the house was rented.

And life went on.

The clients moved farther away. Tenants came and went. Property managers handled the rental. Home values changed. Addresses changed.

We kept in touch.

Not because we knew there was a commission waiting at the end of it. We certainly didn't know that.

We just didn't think the relationship ended because the transaction did.

The Returned Calendar

Years later, we mailed them one of our annual calendars.

It came back.

Wrong address.

That generated another small note in the file and an email asking whether this was their new address, noting that we hadn't realized they had moved, and simply asking how they were doing.

Nothing remarkable about that.

Except perhaps that someone noticed.

There is a temptation in real estate—and probably in most businesses—to concentrate on the people who need something right now.

Who's selling?

Who's buying?

Who's ready?

But people's lives don't operate on a salesperson's calendar.

Sometimes "not now" really does mean not now.

It doesn't necessarily mean never.

Then Came an Email: "we're back"

Years passed again.

And then one morning an email arrived.

The subject was wonderfully simple:

"we're back"

They had finished remodeling another Huntington Beach home and moved back after years of living outside the area.

They mentioned that they had continued receiving our mailings for decades and asked us to update their address.

That was it.

No listing request.

No sales pitch required.

Just two people telling us they were home again.

A few days later, they called looking for a good tax professional. We gave them a referral.

Again, no transaction.

Just help.

And Then, Home Depot

Later that year came one of those wonderfully ordinary encounters that you couldn't manufacture if you tried.

One of the homeowners happened to be in a Home Depot parking lot.

He noticed Ronna's car a few spaces away, recognized the name, called out and came over to say hello.

He remembered that Ronna had helped them buy their Huntington Beach property more than 30 years earlier.

Think about that for a moment.

Not a carefully planned client-appreciation event.

Not an email campaign.

Not an algorithm.

Two people standing in a Home Depot parking lot talking about a house purchased decades before.

That may be a more accurate picture of real estate than most real estate advertising.

Because houses have remarkably long memories.

And so do people.

Staying in Touch Without Knowing the Ending

Looking through this old history now, what strikes us isn't the number of follow-ups.

It's how uneventful most of them were.

A phone call.

A mailing.

A question about property values.

A referral.

A calendar.

A chance hello in a parking lot.

Individually, none of these moments would make much of a story.

Together, they became one.

There was no way to know where the relationship would lead. There was no clever 20-year marketing strategy with a listing waiting conveniently at the end.

There was simply a decision to keep the relationship alive.

And eventually, after all those years, they called us.

The clients we had stayed in touch with for decades were finally ready.

That relationship ultimately resulted in two real estate transactions.

But strangely enough, that's not the part of the story we like best.

The part we like best is everything that happened before then.

Because after decades in this business, we've learned that real estate isn't really about keeping track of houses.

It's about keeping track of people.

And sometimes the best follow-up isn't asking someone when they're going to sell.

Sometimes it's simply making sure they know you're still there.