THE ROOM

My buyers bought a car before closing.
The loan died.

This one is a buyer agent's story. If you're on the listing side, you've taken the other end of this call, when a deal everyone thought was done came apart two weeks out from closing.

Your buyers bought a car. Eleven days later the deal was dead.

A Clean Deal

They were pre-qualified before you showed them anything. They were sensible about their budget and easy to work with.

They found the house in April and offered inside their range. The sellers took it in a day, with no games and no big concessions. The inspection was ordinary and the repairs were small. The appraisal came in at value. Due diligence ended four weeks before closing, and both sides signed off.

That's when you relaxed. The dates were set, the file was quiet, and your attention went to other clients.

The Accident

Three weeks before closing, your buyers were in a car accident. Nobody was hurt. Their car was totaled.

It was an old car and it wasn't worth much. The insurance check came quickly. They both need a car to get to work, so that weekend they bought a used SUV, two years old, forty thousand dollars.

Her parents gave them twenty thousand toward it. They financed the rest.

Neither of them thought to tell you. From where they sat, this had nothing to do with the house. They were replacing a car they lost, and half of it was a gift.

What the Industry Tells You to Do

The industry's answer is the do-not list. That's good advice. Don't open new credit. Don't finance anything. Don't change jobs. Don't move large amounts of money around. Most agents hand that list to buyers at contract, and most lenders send their own version.

You did send it. It was in the packet with the timeline, and you mentioned it on the phone the day they went under contract.

They read it in April, when none of it applied to them.

The Call From the Lender

Two weeks before closing, the lender pulled updated bank statements and a fresh credit report. Two things showed up.

A twenty thousand dollar deposit that didn't match a paycheck. And a new auto loan with a monthly payment attached to it.

The deposit needed an explanation and a gift letter, which is a solvable problem. The car payment is what ended it. It pushed their monthly debt above the lender's limit for their income. At that point the file stopped qualifying.

The loan officer called you before he called them, and you knew from his voice.

Two Weeks of Trying

You called your buyers that afternoon. They were honest, and they were confused. Nobody had ever told them a car counted.

Then all of you went looking for a way through it.

The parents wrote the gift letter. That fixed the deposit and did nothing for the monthly payment. Paying the SUV off would have fixed the ratio, and they didn't have that kind of cash left after the down payment. Selling it two weeks after buying it meant losing thousands they didn't have. A smaller mortgage would have fixed the ratio, and that meant a lower purchase price.

So you called the listing agent and asked. The sellers had already bought their next house, and they weren't willing to come down. They didn't have to. They had other options that spring.

The lender wouldn't move. The deal died eleven days before closing.

The Part Nobody Sees

You told the listing agent the same day, straight, with no softening. That call is short and it isn't fun, and the sooner you make it the better you come out of it.

Then you met your buyers. They had already given notice on their apartment and reserved a truck. You helped them ask their landlord for two more months. You walked them through what has to happen before they can buy again. The gift money has to sit in their account long enough for a lender to count it. The car loan has to be paid off or paid down. Then a new pre-approval, built on the payment they have now.

They apologized to you about six times. You told them it was a reasonable thing to do with a car they needed, and that's true.

Then you drove home and went through the whole thing again in your head. Should you have known. Whether the listing agent is telling the story in her office right now. What that spring commission would have covered.

You called every week during due diligence and almost never after it. That's the piece worth keeping.

What You Could Have Changed

You can't prevent a car accident. You can't stop two working people from buying a car they need.

What you could have changed is when they heard the warning, and what it sounded like.

They got the do-not list in April, in writing, with nine other pages, at a moment when nothing in their life was changing. The lender's version said the same thing. Both were accurate, and neither one stuck.

What they needed was the same information again in May, after due diligence ended, in a sentence about their life instead of a rule about their file.

"Between now and closing, your loan isn't final. If anything changes with your money, your job, or your credit, call me before you do it. A new car, a new credit card, a big deposit, even a gift from family. All of it counts. Call me first, even if you think it doesn't matter."

That takes twenty seconds. It's not on anybody's checklist. It's also the one thing that might have gotten you a phone call from the parking lot of that dealership.

Why It Keeps Happening

A deal that clears due diligence feels finished.

That's when your attention moves, and there's a good reason for it. The file is quiet, the dates are set, and nothing about it asks for anything. The next clients need you.

Financing also feels like the lender's side of the table. The lender holds the documents and talks to underwriting, and you don't. So the weeks between due diligence and closing end up with nobody watching the clients.

The clients are the part that changes. The file just records it.

It's the same gap as the buyer who went quiet after nine showings, where the conversation that mattered never happened. And it sits right next to more showings and more texts coming out as less GCI, because the weeks after due diligence are exactly when a busy agent stops calling.

What to Do on Your Next Deal

Two things, and both take a few minutes.

First, on the day due diligence ends, call your buyers. Don't email. Say the sentence above in your own words. Tell them the loan isn't final until it closes, and give them the list of what counts: new loans, new credit cards, large deposits, job changes, even a change in how they're paid. Ask them to call you first, every time.

Second, put a reminder on your calendar for ten days before closing and make one more call. Three questions.

Has anything changed with your job? Has any large amount of money moved in or out of your accounts? Have you signed anything that has a monthly payment attached to it?

Most of the time the answers take a minute and you go back to work. Once or twice a year you'll hear something while there's still time to deal with it.

That call wouldn't have saved this deal. By then the SUV was bought. The call that saves this one is the one your buyers make from the dealership, and they only make it if you told them to.

When a deal dies anyway, tell the other side quickly, tell your clients the truth about what comes next, and don't carry what isn't yours. Some deals close and some don't. That's part of this business. What's yours is the warning, and how early they hear it.

The Name for This Pattern

This pattern has a name. It's the fifth of the Six Mind Shifts™, Vision, and the shift is from present focus to future casting.

Present focus keeps this week's transaction on track. Future casting tells your clients what the next few weeks can do to their deal, while there's still time for it to matter.

I wrote about it in The Unforgettable Agent. Financing is where most agents see this first. It's the one part of the deal where somebody else holds the paperwork and your client holds the risk.

Every agent loses deals

Most never put a number to it.

Takes about 2 to 3 minutes to find yours.

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Larry Heathcote is an identity coach for real estate agents, creator of the Six Mind Shifts™ and the Six Decision Drivers™, and author of The Unforgettable Agent. He works on the one thing in every room an agent can actually control: who you are when you sit across from a client.