2 Girls In The Market
Welcome to 2 Girls in the Market! Join real estate agents Amber Haley (Big Island, Hawaii) and Rebekah Daniels (Tacoma, Washington) as they share real stories, real laughs and real conversations to empower women in real estate—and in life. Each episode dives into the ups and downs of single life, building a business, navigating the world of real estate, and juggling humor, dating, and personal growth. Because, after all, we’re all just girls in the market.
2 Girls In The Market
4. Listed & Ghosted
This week, Amber and Bekah tackle the dreaded topic of ghosting—whether it’s in the dating world or in real estate deals gone cold. They chat about setting boundaries, navigating awkward communication styles, and laugh through the persistence required in both love and business. From mutual ghosting to the self-esteem hit we all feel when someone disappears, they break down why it happens and how to deal with it. Plus, the girls share some relatable (and funny) stories, all while reminding us not to take ghosting too personally and to focus on what we can control. The episode wraps with a simple truth: be kind and don’t ghost—whether it’s a date or a deal!
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@2GirlsintheMarket
@AmberHaley.Hawaii
@HomeswithBekah
Got a story you want to share or a topic you want us to cover? Send us an email at 2girlsinthemarket@gmail.com
So before we get started, I just want to point out that I have a different mug that I'm using this week because Amber has been telling me that the cup that I'm using is not cute enough and distracting. So I have a giant mug with a bumblebee on it instead.
Amber Haley:Are you happy? As I gulp from my obnoxious, bacteria filled pink Stanley Cup. Yeah. Don't you know have lead in them. I am a woman of many contradictions. That is such a cute mug, though, I'm so jealous. Yeah, my best friend
Rebekah Daniels:got this for me before I moved to Washington, and I've just held it close to my heart.
Amber Haley:Oh, cute.
Rebekah Daniels:We may eventually get a tattoo with honeycomb and a bumblebee. It's like our little BFF tattoo.
Amber Haley:Wow, Bekah, you're a wild woman. I didn't see you as the tattooing kind.
Rebekah Daniels:Oh, I have a few.
Amber Haley:You do? This is shocking information. Where are your tattoos?
Rebekah Daniels:They're hidden.
Amber Haley:Okay that's for a podcast for another day.
Rebekah Daniels:Yeah.
Amber Haley:Well hello everybody. I'm Amber Haley. And I'm Rebekah Daniels. We're coming to you from across an ocean away, but here we go. Good to see you.
Rebekah Daniels:It's good to see you, my friend. You've had a chaotic day.
Amber Haley:It's been a chaotic day. I've been working with a lot of clients. I have a lot of buyer clients right now. How about you?
Rebekah Daniels:Yes. Mostly buyers and so of course the market is heating up and it's challenging in some ways. I don't know if it's like this in your market, but like multiple offers are back, especially depending on the price point. So my first time home buyers were more in that lower range and that is the most competitive price point in that 4 to 500 range.
Amber Haley:Yeah. That's a very competitive price point in my market too. So have you ever met somebody who seems to be like the perfect buyer and they are maybe pre approved for a mortgage and they know they want a house and you meet them and everything goes really well. And then it's like they fall off the face of the earth and they just stop responding to your emails or your texts or your follow ups and you never hear from them again.
Rebekah Daniels:Where did you go? Did you die? And then you kind of
Amber Haley:feel bad. You're just like, what if they actually did? But then, no. Suddenly they do answer the phone sometime later. And they're like, oh yeah, I bought with somebody else. I'm like, how disrespectful. At least you heard back from them. Because sometimes you've just been ghosted. Have you heard that term?
Rebekah Daniels:I've heard that term. I hate that term. Not the term itself. I hate ghosting. I am not a fan.
Amber Haley:Ghosting? Is anybody a fan of ghosting?
Rebekah Daniels:Maybe the people that do it.
Amber Haley:What is ghosting even? What do you consider ghosting?
Rebekah Daniels:What does the dictionary say that ghosting is and I will, I'll give my opinion on if that's an accurate definition or not.
Amber Haley:Okay, so what I've heard is that ghosting is basically a term that describes the act of cutting off all communication with someone without any explanation. Okay. No calls, no texts, no social media DMs, no in person side chats, just gone. No answers.
Rebekah Daniels:Yeah.
Amber Haley:I have definitely been ghosted by clients. Ghosted sometimes by friends. So usually it's like a dating thing, right? That's where I hear it. I've been ghosted by men.
Rebekah Daniels:I'm trying to think if I've been like officially ghosted in the dating sense. I feel like I have more zombies that I deal with, where they'll like kind of disappear. But then they'll still be like watching your stories or just floating around and you're like, why are you here? Like you didn't ever talk to me again. Why are you floating around my internet space?
Amber Haley:There's so many new terms that I've learned lately. Ghosting, zombies. So maybe a zombie is like a home buyer who's shown interest, but then they ghost, but then you see that they're still like, browsing online but they're just looky looing, but they don't respond to your calls or your texts, you can see on your website or something that they're watching, just like you can see a man on your Instagram.
Rebekah Daniels:They're not supposed to know that we can see everything.
Amber Haley:Oh. You know what? If you don't know that people can see everything on the internet these days, what is you doing?
Rebekah Daniels:I've had some people say that when I respond to a message that they send on like one of my polls or like the question and answer things. They're like, you can see who wrote this? And I'm like, yes, I can see.
Amber Haley:Oh yeah.
Rebekah Daniels:So please, be on your best behavior because I will know. I don't do the anonymous ask me anything things.
Amber Haley:I actually taught my mom the other week. She's a boomer. I'm a millennial. Okay, an elder millennial, I guess. but I'm still a millennial. And I've been teaching her slowly how to use Instagram, as if I'm any kind of expert, please, but she had no idea that you could see who watches your stories and now I just wonder how many people don't know it because, the amount of people who won't respond but watch Instagram stories.
Rebekah Daniels:So I wonder if it's based on what type of profile you have.
Amber Haley:So I guess I don't really know. But this ghosting, the more I think about it, it's so relevant. Not just in our personal lives, not just if you're somebody dating but with friends, with colleagues, with clients. Cause it's like, when you're chatting with somebody and everything seems really cool, and then they pull a Houdini on you, vanish into thin air. Like, why is this happening?
Rebekah Daniels:I actually have a story about a client who I was also dating that ghosted me. Yeah, I know. Okay. Let's backtrack. This is someone I was in a relationship with before I got into real estate. And then we broke up and we stayed friends. And once I got my real estate license, he's like, Hey, I want you to help me find a house. And I was like, cool. That's awesome. Let's do it. We're looking at houses. I'm trying to take them through the process. We look at a house. I got my first real estate check. I went out to celebrate. It was a great time. The next day, ghosted. He did not answer my phone calls. He did not answer my text messages, had deleted me off Facebook, deleted me off everything. I was like, what the heck just happened? And it was shocking, and I was just like, I don't know what's going on. Do you still want to buy a house? Because honestly, at that point, that's all I cared about. But, and then a year later, he came back and I was like, Why are you here?
Amber Haley:Did you get any kind of explanation or closure or anything a year later?
Rebekah Daniels:As to why he did it. No.
Amber Haley:No.
Rebekah Daniels:He's not a nice person. I'll just put it that way. And this was something that he liked to do, that emotional manipulation type of thing of okay, I'm just going to cut off communication with you instead of giving you the respect of having a conversation of I don't want to be friends anymore. I don't feel like it's that hard to do when you've actually. Been in a relationship with somebody you have, whether it's friendship or dating, just to have that conversation and say, Hey, I think we should go separate ways.
Amber Haley:Yeah, it seems like at some point we shifted from doing the adult thing and having conversations to this new normal, especially on dating apps and stuff where it's all about swiping and people are so replaceable. It's so easy. And so it's just like normal to ghost.
Rebekah Daniels:The grass is green on the other side. Yeah. The next match is just a swipe away. It just, it's gotten very, I think people have gotten very removed from the concept that you're dealing with human beings and people should be treated with dignity and respect. And we've moved away from that.
Amber Haley:Ghosting hurts way more, I think, than a straight up no thanks. Actually, I read a study that the University of Georgia did. So they did the study.
Rebekah Daniels:It's gotten to the point that we're doing studies.
Amber Haley:We're doing studies on ghosting.
Rebekah Daniels:On the dating terms.
Amber Haley:But they said that two thirds of young adults have either ghosted or been ghosted. People think it's like a simpler, less messy, maybe even polite way to end something. Yeah, but it really messes up everyone's head a lot more. It leaves people hanging, even like with clients sometimes. You're just like, what happened? What did I do wrong? Can't we just handle an awkward conversation? I think some people are just scared too. I can understand sometimes women might be scared. It just feels safer, especially with all the creeps on the internet.
Rebekah Daniels:Is it safer? Okay. I'm going to push back a little bit on that one.
Amber Haley:Yeah.
Rebekah Daniels:I don't, I don't understand the Oh, it feels safer to ghost someone. Because if this, if you're truly concerned for your safety with this man. And then you ghost him. What makes you think that he's not gonna, if he's psychotic, and that's why we're ghosting him, what makes you think he's not gonna just find out where you are and start stalking you? I don't feel like that makes it safer. I feel like you're putting this other person into a worse mental state.
Amber Haley:I think it's really more of just I'm too busy or I just can't deal with breaking it off kind of reason. Probably for most people, don't you think?
Rebekah Daniels:Yeah. I think people want to avoid an awkward conversation and you know what, sometimes in life you have to have awkward conversations. You have to have tough conversations with people. And it's, I think there's kindness and clarity. And so when you are able to be clear and up front with somebody and tell them the truth, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable, it is the right thing to do. And that is the kind thing to do. To just ghost somebody is I think it's selfish.
Amber Haley:Oh yeah, it comes off very selfish. And the irony is that in the end you probably feel worse when you're the person who ghosted. And you look worse. You do look like a selfish[bleep]. wanted to learn a little bit more about ghosting too, so I actually was wondering who's doing all the ghosting the most? And they have found that it's actually millennials. Millennials.
Rebekah Daniels:Get it together, millennials. Millennials we. I'm grouping myself in because I guess technically I am a millennial. We have this mentality no chemistry, no problem, ghost them but Gen Z actually is really not as tolerant of ghosting. So I guess that's good for, younger generations. Yeah. They've seen our trauma and they're like, nevermind, we don't want to do that. This is a problem. Yeah, it is. It is a problem. Honestly, this explains a lot, though, about our generation.
Amber Haley:I mean it's everywhere and I think with real estate clients, it's probably pretty easy to understand why like a real estate client will ghost or a realtor will ghost their clients. It's just lack of communication, I'm sure, lack of actual interest, plans change. Any person can get on the Internet, just like with the dating apps that we were talking about. But anyone can get on the Internet and find a million real estate agents on a million different websites and inquire and ask a question or this or that and lead them on. And then all of a sudden, actually they're not really qualified or they're not really interested or they're not really this or that. And it's just easier to just stop. Stop communicating, even if you zombie around for a while. There's definitely things that I could think that I can do to probably prevent being ghosted by clients. And that's just You know, building a really good rapport and open lines of communication, staying in contact, but it's also just part of our world, isn't it?
Rebekah Daniels:It is, and to be honest, I would not mind as much if a client or a lead ghosted me, because it's, I think that's to be expected in some ways. You meet somebody at an open house, they sign in, they may or may not give you the correct information, you try to follow up with them, you may never hear from them. Even if you felt like you built up really good rapport with them at the open house. It's almost like that's the first date, the first coffee date. You built up this rapport and then you never hear back from them. That I can understand because at the end of the day, This, in a professional environment, you came in to see me, maybe you connected, maybe you didn't, maybe you met somebody else and decided to work with that agent instead, like later on in that day, who knows? I don't care if you triple up your open house dates.
Amber Haley:Wow. Bekah is sounding like a true millennial right now.
Rebekah Daniels:This is in the professional sense. Now you have a lead, somebody you haven't even signed like an agency agreement with. But if it's a client, if this is like someone who's committed to you, I would feel a little bit different about that person ghosting me. Cause at that point we've built up enough of a rapport, enough of a relationship that you can say, Hey, you know what, Rebekah, we don't think this is a good fit. And we're going to, we're going to go to something else. I'm like, all right, that's totally cool.
Amber Haley:Or maybe there's been someone else the whole time, secretly.
Rebekah Daniels:That's unethical on the other agent's part.
Amber Haley:It is, it does happen. And I have had clients work with me and I always, screen and say are you working with another agent? But I have found out much much, much later that at the beginning they were actually working with another agent. I'm not straight up calling them a liar, but I think there's a lot of confusion with agency representation with clients and real estate agents, especially people who don't have a lot of experience buying real estate and they don't understand how the business works, but yeah it's always interesting when it happens. I, the excuse of being too busy is an ironic one though, right? Because I feel like most ghosting happens in the online world. When you're meeting someone online, client, friend, a potential dating partner, but we're all really connected, right? Like, when are we not on our phones? When are we really too busy to respond to our phones?
Rebekah Daniels:I certainly don't have hundreds of unread text messages in my phone and hundreds of unread emails in my phone. That doesn't sound like me at all.
Amber Haley:Oh my goodness. Yeah, when somebody just chooses, oh yeah, let's see, I want to see, let's hear. So Bekah is going to look at her phone right now and tell us how many unread messages she has.
Rebekah Daniels:I have 356 unread text messages. I'm so ashamed. Wait, can you say that one more time? I have 356. It is almost one for every single day of the year.
Amber Haley:356 unread text messages?
Rebekah Daniels:Yes.
Amber Haley:On your phone right now?
Rebekah Daniels:Yes. I am gonna lose sleep tonight. Why don't, okay. This is wild. This is wild to me. If it goes past where I can scroll on my screen. I can do three swipes maybe and if it goes beyond that it's just it's lost It is lost to the ether and I was never meant to actually respond to it I try to hold things in my notification bar for when I can actually respond to them because if you know they'll come in when I'm driving or something. A lot of it is spam or telemarketer stuff and Some of it's just been lost. So if you don't hear from me double text me triple text me Because it's not personal, it's just ADHD.
Amber Haley:But do you just want to clear them just so you don't have to?
Rebekah Daniels:If I could, I would. I don't know how to sort my phone to just show me the unread messages. I don't, this is the same thing with Facebook Messenger. It's the same thing with my Instagram messages. If it gets past a certain point, I'm like, I don't, it's gone. I don't know how to get back to them.
Amber Haley:Wow. Okay. So what does your inbox look like? I'm talking about your work email inbox that clients are trying to get ahold of you.
Rebekah Daniels:That one's better.
Amber Haley:I'll tell you mine. My work, I'm a little worse at.
Rebekah Daniels:I have 24 unread in my email.
Amber Haley:I have 279, but they're not like all unread. They're not all unread. A lot of them are spam. Okay, see, yeah, a lot of it is spam or like promotional stuff and I'm like, oh yeah, I want to get back to that article at some point. New listing stuff. I am that, I, hypothetically, I'm like an inbox zero kind of person, but it's really hard because I just. Emails are hard. They, people just will email you about anything and everything and it's too much. But I do like an inbox zero. I could not handle however many, whatever outrageous number you have on your phone. I also don't like on the social media inbox things, like I need to delete the message, clear the mess, I don't like seeing all of those. I don't want to see them. I have a feeling you have a lot in your DM requests. I'd rather block you. I'd rather just block somebody than have all of those Wow. You know what, I kind of wonder, we've both, I'm gonna, I'm gonna rephrase that. Yeah, we've both shared a bit today. We're learning a lot. The world is learning a lot about us today. But yeah, now I'm just wondering, How many people you've maybe accidentally ghosted that you can't even remember?
Rebekah Daniels:There's probably people who think I ghosted them and I didn't mean to.
Amber Haley:Okay, this is confession time.
Rebekah Daniels:Oh my gosh, actually, I think I have ghosted people.
Amber Haley:It's all coming back to her. You know what? I'm gonna be really honest. This is something that eats at me to this day. The first time a guy ghosted me, I have spent most of my adult life not single, not dating. When I started learning more about dating as an adult, I was very shocked by things like ghosting. It was truly shocking to me that this happened. And I'd heard about this, and I've heard I'm just like, people must be dramatic. But no, it happens. And the first time it happened to me, I was just I was truly dumbfounded. But then I remembered that I fully, completely, ghosted my high school boyfriend. How dare you? I know. It was like the day after graduation, I moved away and I never spoke to him again. Oh my God. I just realized. You never spoke to him again? Okay he might think we're still together.
Rebekah Daniels:He's just like, yeah, my girlfriend, Amber, she's so great. She's a Realtor now. I'm gonna visit her in Hawaii someday. I have cheated on him a lot, apparently. You almost made me spit out my water. We might need to edit that out. I fully ghosted him. I feel really bad about it. It was a different time. I didn't have an iPhone. It was, I was It was a different time with communication, and I think, I wasn't that into him, and I just didn't know how to end it. I was clearly moving on, literally moving on, going off to college. It was very immature. I feel very bad about it to this day. I think do I owe, maybe I owe him an apology to this day. I'm sorry that I did that. That was the wrong thing to do, and maybe it's karma when anybody ghosts me now. Yeah, at this point, you saying you weren't really into him. Maybe that's what you should apologize for. Okay, I do have this rule on ghosting though, because I think we're too quick to call certain things ghosting. When instead it's just you have a poor follow up plan. So I think if somebody has only texted you once, And you didn't respond, maybe this is just a rule for myself to make me feel a little bit better. But if they've only reached out to you once and you didn't respond, and then they never reached out again, not ghosting. Not ghosting. No, you have to attempt multiple times to contact the person and they don't respond. Then it's ghosting. Okay, but how many times? I've had a real estate coach tell me that in real estate, you should contact a lead seven times with no response before they give up. And I'm just thinking, if I applied that to my personal life, I'm not going to be out there sending off texts being left unread seven times. Yeah, in the dating world, that would be very stalker ish. So we do not apply all of the real estate principles
to dating in this sense because texting someone seven times Or calling them seven times when they have not responded is stalker ish. Doing it with a lead or a prospect within business is just good follow up. But I would say more than two or three times within the dating realm. Like three, three is like the max. And I think it really depends on like the level of communication you've had with this person up to that point. If you've only had one coffee date with them and then they like Ghost you, I would give it two times and then be done. I would not go for the third. Because that's too much.
Amber Haley:Yeah, it is too much. And if there's somebody who maybe historically has been a really thorough, good communicator, and then it just suddenly stops, I mean that, obviously I assume that they died, because how dare you? Or maybe something's happening in their life. Maybe something happened, but that's it. That's a good indication, I think, but then, there are those types of communicators that are the one word one emoji not surprising.
Rebekah Daniels:I've definitely, I don't know, I tend to, depending on the level of my friendship or relationship with the person, if they just drop off the face, the earth, I am offended, but I am still going to, I do my due diligence and I reach out multiple times, I'd have no problem triple texting, sometimes quadruple texting somebody. If this is like outside their norm and outside the norm of our relationship and be like, what is going on? And then maybe, honestly, I might do it seven times with this. If it's somebody that actually like in a relationship with, or Somebody that you have a relationship with. I will take it to the end. If you're like, all right, this is the last thing of I don't know what's going on here.
Amber Haley:So here's the advice coming out of the podcast today for better or worse. If you are having problems with a real estate client, make sure you reach out seven times completely being ignored before you give up. And also, if you are dating a guy, make sure you reach out seven times. No, don't do it, don't do it. Before you take that message, ghosting is awful. I've, I confess to you all that I have ghosted. I'm actually now remembering that I did go on a date with a guy once. It was fine. We, neither of us reached out after, so that does not cancel each other out. It's a mutual ghosting. I don't consider that ghosting. I feel like that's just, it didn't work and you've both kind of moved on in other directions. It's not ghosting. It did feel rude, but how can I feel like they were rude when I was rude, too? Yeah, not ghosting. Okay, not ghosting. Careful not to call every single little thing ghosting, because I don't think it is. Ghosting, I feel like, is a deliberate purposely choosing to never talk to you again, and not give you a reason for it. And that's rude. Just having poor follow up, or poor Follow back, can be, like me triple text me, please, if you have not heard from me and I promise I'll respond at least by the third one, hopefully, unless I get lost in the ether again. Unless I got lost in those hundreds of text messages. Wow. Yeah, it's funny to laugh and there are some funny situations and, my mutual ghosting thing. I don't think anybody's feelings were hurt. I think it was just a more convenient way to end it. But honestly, I think sometimes ghosting can have a really profound impact on somebody's self esteem and their mental health. I had a friend once I heard, she told me a story about ghosting, where she, it was somebody that she was, dating, maybe like close to boyfriend status, I don't know exactly, and she literally helped him move into his house, and they had plans the next day for him to meet her parents, and then She goes home and never hears or sees him again. He never spoke to her again. He never got back to her. And can you imagine what that would do to you? Where you're just wondering. He didn't die. She knew he didn't die. He just never got back to her. And so clearly, there was a lack of communication and he didn't want to deal with breaking it off. But she spent the whole day helping him move into his house. Trash. It's not funny. It's not funny. That man is trash. It's trash. It's rude. And so she just has no closure and she's just wondering, what did I do? Why am I, why was I not enough? Why did I help this man move into his house? But it's, I, ghosting is not a reflection on the ghostee. It is a reflection of the ghoster. If you've been ghosted it's not you, it's them, 100%. And don't take it to heart because the problem is with them, not with you. They were not mature enough to have that conversation and that's not somebody that you need to have in your life. Yeah, and that's the hard part, right? Because I think a lot of people know that, and it's easy for us to tell our friends that, but even with a client, say you go, you are a real estate agent like we are, and you go on a listing presentation, or this or that, and you never hear from that client again and you really take it maybe personally what did I do that wasn't enough, when really it's maybe just a numbers game, or maybe they just decided to go with the agent who was their brother's friend, and that's a bummer that they wasted your time, but it really, Is not always about you. Yeah. Sometimes, but no, it's not. You're right. It's not. I think as real estate agents, sometimes we do get a little too emotional about the losses. Yeah. I see it in the real estate mastermind groups where, you know, on Facebook and different places. Oh my gosh, I can't believe that this person decided to work with somebody else. And I'm so angry and so upset. And I understand having that initial reaction, but it's not about you. And this is a professional sense. It's not a relationship and I feel like you need to move on. This is not something to end friendships over because somebody decided to work with somebody else. It's not something to lose your sleep over. Just, okay, the person ghosted you, move on to the next thing, focus your energies over there. Don't get bogged down in the negativity, because it's not going to help you. It's not going to build your business, and it's just going to suck your joy. Because honestly, if they've ghosted you, if that lead has ghosted you, they are not thinking about you any other time after that. So yeah, are you thinking about them so well said and in the real estate market? We have to have really thick skin right being in sales You have to have thick skin being a woman in the world. You have to have thick skin and Gosh in the dating market you have to have thick skin, too it's so so hard and it feels really terrible. I think to people when they don't have closure, because we make up stories in our head, right? We'll make up stories about what happened, and they're usually not very flattering on ourselves. Yeah, but the thing I've had to learn and still learn and learn over and over again that it's hard, but we're not always entitled to closure. We're not always going to know why. And we have to be our own closure, right? Sometimes people are just Yeah. It's a choice that we make. People are just busy. Sometimes we did something that makes people uncomfortable. Sometimes people just lose interest, especially if the it's only been an online thing. We're not entitled to closure from people and that's really hard, but we can't guilt people into giving us that. No, you can't control how people treat you or how I guess you can control how they make you feel. But you can't control how they treat you, but you can control your reaction to it. So focus on those controllables. Yeah, absolutely. You just gotta put your, like you said, put your energy somewhere else. Focus on Lifting, edifying things. Yeah, and if you mess up, because we all mess up, I mess up all the time, it's never too late to apologize maybe to that boyfriend in high school, it's never too late to apologize to somebody. But, at the same time, maybe don't go back and text all the people that you've ghosted, just, choose from this point going forward that you're going to turn over a non ghosting leaf. Don't go reaching out to those old leads. Actually do reach out to those old leads that you've ghosted. See where they're at. Real estate leads. Real estate leads. Maybe it didn't work then. Maybe it'll work now. I don't know. I'm not a dating guru. I'm just single and in the market still. Wow. There you have it. This has been Ghosting in a Nutshell. It's rough out there, guys, but we're in this together. Yes. We're all just girls in the market at the end of the day. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks so much for listening to our good advice, our bad advice, our confessions, our embarrassing ghosting stories, and everything in between. Just, please don't ghost us. and like and subscribe.