How should an agent handle a buyer who is not ready?

A buyer who is not ready is normally handled in one of two ways, and both are wasteful. They are dropped, in which case the agent has spent the acquisition cost and abandoned the asset. Or they are added to a general follow-up rhythm, which contacts them monthly regardless of whether anything has changed and trains them to ignore the contact before the moment it would have mattered.

The alternative requires one conversation and produces something neither approach has: the blocking condition. Almost every not-ready buyer is blocked on something identifiable — a property to sell first, a lease with an end date, financing to arrange, a job to start, a partner who has not agreed, a school year. Asking directly what has to happen before they could move produces a specific answer, and that answer is a date or an event to work against.

That converts follow-up from a habit into a schedule. Contact shortly before the blocking condition resolves, referring to it — the lease is up next month, the financing conversation was due — which reads as attentiveness rather than as pursuit, because it is. It also arrives at the only moment when the answer can change, which is the moment general follow-up almost never happens to hit.

In the interval, what is sent should be useful rather than promotional, and it should be about their specific situation. Someone waiting to sell first benefits from what is happening to prices in their own street. Someone arranging financing benefits from knowing what documentation will be required. Listing alerts tuned to criteria that have been reviewed after a few viewings are welcome; untuned ones train the recipient to ignore your name.

The written agreement question now sits inside this. A buyer who is not ready is not yet at the point of touring, and the representation agreement is executed before showings rather than at first contact. That gives a natural and honest sequence — establish the blocking condition, stay useful until it clears, and have the agreement conversation when touring becomes real, which is when it is required and when it makes sense to them.

One discipline worth keeping: record the blocking condition and its expected date somewhere the system will remind you, rather than in memory. The whole method depends on contact arriving at the right moment, and the right moment is frequently six or nine months away — long enough that no agent reliably remembers it and short enough that missing it costs the transaction.