Profile of a serial lowballer.

The definition of real estate insanity is making the same offer over and over and expecting different results.

I've been pretty hard on sellers lately, so in the interest of equal-opportunity flagellation, this week I'll throw the spotlight on that most hopeful yet hopeless of buyers, the serial lowballer.

You know you're a serial lowballer when:

• you've spent the better part of a year papering the town with offers that have a snowball's chance
• your agent groans when you call her
• you make the kind of offer on hot new listings that other buyers make on stale old listings, then wonder why no one takes you seriously
• your agent gives you pre-printed real estate forms and tells you to write your own offers
• agents you've never met nor even heard of discuss your most recent exploits at office meetings
• your pricing strategy is based, not on recent comparable sales, but on finding the seller's pain threshold
• your idea of sharp negotiating is to walk into an open house and loudly point out the home's defects to the listing agent
• you know, just know, that if you keep it up you'll get a great deal
• and until then, it's all good clean fun

If you've somehow gotten the impression that lowballers bug me, let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.  Unlike most agents, with their callous "money talks and bullshit walks" attitude toward buyers, I recognize the key role lowballers play in that great living breathing social organism we call the home-buying public.  I know that in every parade, someone must bring up the rear.  I know that in every five-offer situation, someone must come in sixth.  I know that in the hierarchy of buyers, someone must lose so that someone else may win. 

Forget win-win:  home-buying is Darwinian.  No one goes home with a sixth-place trophy.

And let me speak for a moment about the agents who selflessly—as in "will never get paid in this lifetime or the next"—represent the serial lowballer.  Truly they exemplify the spirit of pro bono real estate.  Just who are these unsung, unpaid heroes?  Newbies with more time on their hands and hope in their hearts than real buyers in their PDAs.  Engineers with day jobs to pay the bills and real estate licenses to put some sparkle and zip in their cubicled lives.  Eternal optimists who've never met a buyer they didn't like.  And anyone else who can't tell the real deal from a cheap knock-off.

Well, I'm near the bottom of your screen and I've barely scratched the surface.  The serial lowballer lopes like a lion through the real estate marketplace, unrestrained by either his agent or by wimpy social and business niceties.  The serial lowballer is a mixture of innocent babe and used-car salesman.  The serial lowballer is a hardy perennial, flourishing in markets good or bad.  The serial lowballer represents the best in mindless optimism, an unconquerable spirit refusing to kneel to reality or reason.  The serial lowballer is his own worst enemy, his offer a signal to sellers that he'd be a little handful all through escrow.

Yes, the serial lowballer can teach us many a lesson.  If only the serial lowballer could learn one.   

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