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Your cutoff time is whenever your agent stops answering her phone. You wouldn't believe how often I call listing agents and offices and don't get an answer or a prompt callback. The smart ones use some sort of showing service but some insist on a phone call to them or their office for instructions. When neither answers, your house doesn't get shown.
When we were looking, we did all of our paperwork beforehand and had a pre-approval letter that we took with us to showings. Isn't that the norm?
But I guess you'd want to require pre-approval somehow? I'm not a realtor, I don't know if you can do that. Seems like it sure would save time.
It's not the norm to take a copy of a pre-approval letter to showings. Pre-approval letters are just that, and not worth a lot. There are plenty of agents out there that will show houses without a pre-approval letter. Based on my past experience as an agent, I know that even if it is stated in the MLS that buyers must be approved before showings, listing agents don't follow up and check on this. I never had a listing agent ask me about it when I showed expensive houses. Knowing how it actually works in my town is the basis for my concern.
When we were selling our last home, we had people come (with an appointment) as late as 8:30 PM on weeknights and 9:00 PM on the weekend (Friday and Saturday evening). I was accomdating, because I wanted to "move it" into "sold" status.
I was in the market as a buyer last fall, and most places I looked at, the sellers had requested no showings after 5 or 6 pm, Mon - Fri. Most required 24 hour notice (although they would sometimes waive it if the buyer's agent called and said they had a very serious buyer in town for 2 days . . . )
5 pr 6 pm as a cut off time seemed pretty reasonable to me. Even when your house is on the market, you still have to make dinner, do laundry, help the kids with their science fair project, bathe the dog, and a bunch of other stuff that could interfere with a showing.
Not sure what kind of weekend restrictions the sellers had in place for weekends - I didn't try to make any viewing appointments on the weekend. I stuck with open houses, and let my broker devote his time to buyers who didn't have the flexibility to take a few hours off work through the week/buyers who were in for a few days from out of town.
Question: Do the buyers hang around when the sellers and their agent show the house? I thought that was a "no, no". Just wondered...............
We had it happen twice. We could not come home because realtor and sellers were having a confab in our driveway. At first we thought it was a good sign, but nothing came of it. Later I decided that it they had been really interested, they would have been inside our house having the confab. Talking in our drive 2 hours after the showing window was inconsiderate, IMO.
The eventual buyer did spend a long time on the second visit. As I said before, this is often a good sign.
When I was selling a home in the 80's, a woman came about 7 PM. We cleared out with kid and dog, but happened to run into her in the driveway as we were leaving. Oh well, she was nice about it. So we drive around and come back in about a half-hour and the agent's car is gone, so we're safe to go back in. We get the kid showered and ready for bed. Phone rings at about 8 and it's the agent -- the woman has looked at all available homes in my development, and now wants to come back and look at mine again because she liked it best. I never expected that! I warned the agent that the shower would be wet, but we all cleared out again. And she ended up buying the house.
Just goes to show you, even when you think you're in the clear, you're not!
My agent advised against the 24-hour requirement. She said their on-line system schedules the showings, so if someone calls at 8 PM asking for 5 the next day, the system literally won't schedule it because it's not 24 hours. She said she would put in the agent notes to give reasonable notice so the owner (me) can clear the dog out. I'm just afraid that an agent will mention the dog to the prospective buyer.
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Pre-approval letter?
