Oh, if only oral purchase offers were true. I'd be doing a lot better right now! I get quite a few of them. But as a real estate agent, I need to tell these would-be buyers to put their money where their mouth is.

I'm not talking about counter-offers, and negotiating. I'm talking about the first step, the initial offer to purchase. It must be in writing with money to back it up.

There are a lot of people, nationwide it seems, who believe that an oral purchase offer is legal and to be taken seriously. Well, maybe it's not illegal, but it's certainly not serious, either.

"O.k., sure, I can present that, no problem. How much will you be depositing with the purchase offer?" Then, all of a sudden, they're not serious anymore - because they never were.

They'll fax me, email me, tell me over the phone, site unseen, that they'll take it! Oh, if only real estate was that simple!

So, I fax them back, email them back, write them back a purchase offer, and I decide what the deposit will be. This is how to get the not-so-serious buyer to disappear off the face of the earth. Sometimes we never even get to the point where they tell me their full first and last names!

You know, I'm from New York. Ya know what that means? Don't say it if you don't mean it.