What monkeys and Valentine's Day teach us about trust in real estate

"With Valentine's Day right around the corner, many successful real estate agents across the country will be doing what they do every February: dropping off chocolates, flowers, handwritten cards, and in a few ambitious cases, cherry pies, on their clients' doorsteps. And weirdly it works. Not because chocolate makes people sell their house. Not because cherry pie unlocks listing inventory. But because Valentine's Day taps"

"Long before humans had open houses, CRM systems, or market reports, we had grooming. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued that primates use physical grooming to build trust, reinforce social bonds, and maintain group cohesion. It wasn't hygienic. It was social. Grooming said: I see you. You matter. You're part of my circle. The problem, Dunbar noted, is that grooming doesn't scale. You can only pick"

"So humans evolved something better. In Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Dunbar proposed that language itself emerged as a form of social grooming, a way to maintain relationships at scale through shared information, storytelling, and gossip. Instead of touching each other's fur, we exchanged insight and context. (Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, 1996; Wikipedia summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming,_Gossip_and_the_Evolution_of_Language) In other words, we"

Real estate agents deliver holiday gifts—chocolates, flowers, handwritten cards, and pies—to clients to strengthen relationships and prompt reciprocity. The practice taps into an ancient social mechanism: primate grooming built trust, reinforced social bonds, and maintained group cohesion without hygiene motives. Language evolved as scalable grooming through sharing information, storytelling, and gossip, enabling maintenance of larger social networks. Holiday gifting signals recognition and value, encouraging reciprocal goodwill and sustained client loyalty. Agents use seasonal, branded, homemade, or store-bought items across occasions to keep relationships active and leverage the norm of reciprocity for business benefits.

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