Here’s a lesson about brokering that they never teach you in real estate classes: Don’t let the buyer and seller speak to each other directly, if you can prevent it.
Why?
First, consider this law of human interaction: No one instinctively likes everyone he/she meets.
It’s just a fact of life that we sometimes run across people who rub us the wrong way. Depending on our personalities and their personalities, the chances of a bad first interaction are probably something like 5-15%. If one or the other of the people involved are particularly disagreeable, the odds of something bad happening are probably a lot higher.
Then, on top of our natural inclination to dislike certain of our fellow humans, there is the fact that buying or selling a property is an inherently stressful thing to do. There is a lot of money on the line. And you’re often talking about someone’s home. People under stress are even more prone to saying ill-considered things than people in every-day life, and one ill-considered line can blow up a deal.
What’s the solution? Brokers should keep the parties apart. This allows buyer and seller to be a bit more detached / dispassionate about the potential transaction and also provides a kind of fail-safe, preventing ill-considered outbursts from reaching the other side and blowing things up.
Deals (should) happen when they are in the interest of both buyer and seller. It’s such a shame when interpersonal BS screws them up.