I hear some version of it every single week. A buyer reaches out, we talk for a few minutes, things are going great — and then the apology arrives: "I should be honest, I'm probably not buying for another six months. I don't want to waste your time."
I want to put something on the record, publicly, so I can just send people this link from now on: you are not wasting my time. You are the reason I have a business.
Six months goes faster than you think
Here's what people with longer timelines get wrong: they picture six months as a waiting room. It isn't. It's a runway. Six months is exactly enough time to get your financing genuinely right instead of rushed — to fix the credit item that's been nagging you, to compare lenders while nothing is on the line, to learn what homes in your towns actually sell for instead of what they're listed at. By the time your moment comes, you're not starting a search. You're finishing one.
And that time passes faster than anyone believes. The client who says "we're a year out" in July is standing in a kitchen with me at an open house in March, wondering where the year went. The market doesn't wait politely either — around here, it moves:
The sprint clients — and three weeks in Belchertown
Now, the clients who are ready today? I love that too — but let's be honest about what it is: it's a sprint. I just put a couple under contract in Belchertown, MA, and that deal was three weeks of relentless showings, offers written and rewritten, refining our number, refining our strategy, and hammering the process forward every single day. There were moments where we lost out and had to regroup, look each other in the eye, and go again.
And I'll tell you what the most satisfying part of it was. It wasn't the accepted offer — although that phone call was a good one. It was watching the trust build in real time. Every showing where I told them the truth about a house instead of what was easy, every offer where we talked through the risk honestly, that trust compounded. By the final offer, we weren't guessing together. We were operating together.
What a client is actually worth
Here's the part I don't say out loud enough. When someone hires me, they're handing me a transaction worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — usually the largest financial decision of their life — and saying "I trust you to represent me in this." I do not take that lightly. I don't think I ever could.
Are the commission checks great? Of course. Everyone wants to get paid, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But if you asked me what actually stays with me after a closing, it's not the check. It's the text message a week later that says "we love it here." It's the client who sends their sister to me. It's sitting back after the closing table clears and really taking in that these people trusted me with something enormous — and I delivered.
So if you're "six months out" — here's my offer
Reach out anyway. Tell me your timeline, whatever it is, and I'll meet you exactly there. No pressure, no weekly sales calls, no treating you like a transaction with a countdown clock. We'll set up a direct MLS pipeline so you see what's really happening in your towns the moment it happens, we'll get your financing questions answered while the stakes are low, and when your moment comes — whether that's in three weeks or next spring — you'll walk into this market as the most prepared buyer in the room.
Sprints, marathons, and everything in between. That's the mix that built my business, and it's the mix I'm grateful for every day.