Respect Home Buyers in Sacramento By Not Speaking Real Estate Jargon

As a career Sacramento Realtor, I try not to use real estate jargon with our home buyers. We speak it so much to each other. If you were to listen to a convo between myself and the most wonderful transaction coordinator in the world, we may as well be speaking Klingon. Here is an example: We need to issue the NTBP to sign the CR 2, and we may as well throw in the DTC since we’re so close to docs. What is that real estate jargon?

It means we need to send the buyer a Notice to Buyer to Perform, to put the buyer on notice to complete a contractual obligation. In this example, it is to release the loan contingency. Being close to docs means the lender is about ready to send loan documents to escrow. We might suspect the buyer will try to extend closing, and we want the right to cancel if the buyer doesn’t close escrow on time.

We would do this especially if we were sitting on an executed backup offer that offered more money to the seller. But a Sacramento Realtor has no business using real estate jargon with a buyer. Every industry has its own acronyms and secret decoder rings. It is almost unpardonable to speak a foreign language with a home buyer. Nobody wants to ask for an explanation.

I found myself talking with a buyer yesterday and apologizing. The apology was because I referred to a 3, 2. Caught myself doing it. So I corrected the real estate jargon, apologized for saying it in the first place and then explained. A 3, 2 is a 3 bedroom / 2 bath home. There is no place in real estate communication for real estate jargon. It is insulting to our clients when we speak that way.

We can use our words. That’s why we have words. Maybe even the best words, the very best words. You cannot take the real estate reporter out of my husband, even though he now works for the state of California. For instance, if you think corporate communications is laughable, imagine dealing with government workers on the state level. He constantly works on breaking a story into simple words that anybody can understand and relate to.

As a Sacramento Realtor, we owe our clients the same communication skills. Be sensitive to the needs of others. Just say no to real estate jargon.