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to require a pre-qual/pre-approval cuts both ways ...
It would allow me as a Buyer's agent to require prospects to have shown they've taken that step. Now, it should be MY responsibility to do so to begin with, but I would gander that 30%+ of prospects have not (been required to) taken this step.
Now, require that I SUBMIT to you any type of info on my Buyer, and your house isn't shown. Neither owner nor listing agent has any right to this info prior to us submitting an offer.
We had a home up for sale quite a few years ago and a Realtor (another real estate co) came in with ALL the other realtors in his office while I was in bed with the flu, no knock on the door...nothing. I was NOT happy about it. A few days later I was still home sick and getting ready to go in and see the Dr. I was in the shower and the same thing happened!
Yikes. After hearing prospective buyers coming into my house while I was in the shower , I began locking the storm door whenever I was home. I was fine with last-minute showings, as long as the agent called first, which wasn't always the case. There were a couple no-notice entries I thwarted that way.
Oh, and the house was under contract in 3 weeks, so my locking the storm door didn't prevent a sale.
What if it's such a unique house, and it's a luxury million dollar house, and owner still lives in it with a lot of valuables.
Owner doesn't want curious tire kickers just trampling through the house, and owner wants to point out unique features, and keep an eye on valuables not stolen.
Is it rare, odd, or a turn off for owner to stipulate:
1) Shown by appointment only
2) Prequal letter first
3) Owner present to show
May I submit a "number 4"?
I plan on selling in the next year or so, south suburb of Chicago (probably would be listed as a "buyers" market or at best "neutral"). I have two dogs (friendly but territorial pit bulls), and plan to take them with me prior to an arranged showing - there's no way I will allow a lockbox on the home, I'll leave the door unlocked and sit in my car in the street until the agent arrives, then go for a ride - too dangerous to potentially allow a stranger to enter the home unannounced with the dogs (and me, LOL) there. Also, I plan to construct a large (150 sq. ft.) "closet" in the basement that will remain padlocked during showings - I plan to keep valuables, guns, personal paperwork, etc. in there while the house is for sale, and probably also build a locked, fenced-off area in the basement. where boxes of semi-valuable collectables will be stored on shelving. If not, I'll have to move prior to selling, or call the "Ugly House People" and take the hit. I hate the idea of owning two homes at once, so the latter carries more weight than the former.
Question, does this sound reasonable?
On a related note, I sold my Aunt's home last year, and found the buyer via a referral from a neighbor. The price was split between what I could have gotten through a realtor and what the Ugly House guys would have paid, but did not have to pay a commission - the buyer got a great deal, and I saved a lot of headaches at a cost I felt was "worth it". That would probably be the ideal situation for myself, as well.
Curly Bobalink - Your idea for padlocked storage is fine, that will work, no issue with that.
Your idea about leaving the door unlocked and sitting across the street is also OKAY - as a buyer's agent, I could make it work even though I think there's still some value in using the lockbox as an additional tool for protecting and providing tracking of who has been there.
Just for your own consideration, I would let you know that in our MLS, we take showing instructions very seriously and someone coming in unannounced without an appointment would be highly unusual, and actionable against the agent.
Also consider that we are all creatures of habit, and when you change procedures from the norm, sometimes it causes more confusion and creates more unforeseen issues than it saves. Here's an example from early in our career: We were looking at a rural country home, and we were told when we made the appointment that the seller would be home when we arrived, but would take the dog and go for a walk. When we arrived, the seller was in the front yard with the dog, and she waved and smiled but we didn't have any conversation... she walked off down the road. Going in the house, the front door and sliding glass door in back was open with the screen doors shut, letting the breeze blow through. Several windows in the house were also open. (In this area, it's common to not have AC, so people do commonly open windows on nice warm days in summer!)
In our training, we're told to leave the house exactly how we found it. If lights, systems are on/off we leave them as we found them, including all doors and windows. In this case, we left the doors open as well, with the screen doors shut, as we had found them. I actually had the thought that she may have left without her keys and I didn't want to lock her out.
Well, we got a call from the listing agent later that the owner was quite upset that we hadn't locked up the house when we left. We probably should have tried to clarify before leaving. It was a learning experience. We assumed, since we'd found it open, and she was out on foot, that she was not going far and we should just leave it as we found it. If we had unlocked the doors, we most certainly would have locked them when we left.
Of course... the issues could have been averted with a note on the door that says "lock it on your way out!" We all should strive for clear communications always.
Last edited by Diana Holbrook; 04-07-2019 at 11:38 AM..
I'm a broker as when we sell our own primary house we request a 2-3 hour notice. We don't want to make it too difficult, but on the other had don't want people popping in with 10 min notice either.
If we go out of town for the weekend we may put go direct for those two-three days, no open houses. If my clients want an open house we do them for them, they are a lead source for agents mostly. We don't care for the idea of strangers off the street coming into our home.
As a seller, I loved the showing service my agent used. I got a text and just had to text back yes or no when an appointment request came through. I was fine with no notice during the work day as I was already out of the house and left it showing ready every morning, but I think their minimum was an hour.
Regarding leaving things as they were, I know there was a thread on this at one point but unfortunately, I did find that the lights which I always left on were often turned off when I came home. I had CFL bulbs and because they take a few minutes to come to full power, I wanted the house as well illuminated as possible, right as someone walked in. And just because one agent thought they were being thoughtful turning them off as they left didn't mean that there weren't more showings that same day who walked into a house with the lights turned off. When I sell again, it will be less of an issue as I'm switching over to LED bulbs everywhere, so while I would still leave lights on for a showing, I'm less concerned about needing that warm up time if they did happen to get turned off.
As for locking stuff up, I think that you are better off just removing it from the house. I'm not saying a locked closet would prevent me from making an offer on a house that I otherwise liked, but it would irritate me to not be able to see what a closet is like given how important storage is. When I sold, I packed up a couple of boxes of irreplaceable items and stored them at someone's house, and put my Rx meds and things that I still needed access to but didn't want to keep around during showings into a small suitcase and put it in my car each morning.
That's why I love the ShowingTime App. I have 5 kids so this just gave me a notification on my phone. I could accept, decline or request a new time. Worked great!
I would never allow a lockbox if I still lived in the house.
I would never allow anybody walking through my home without me there and no uppity realtor is going to be telling me otherwise.
And it's totally your right to make it more difficult to sell your home if you want, but why name call? Most agents aren't "uppity".
So I have 2 properties listed with tenants inside and to cut down on buyers who aren't serious, I'm requiring a pre-approval to be emailed to me prior to showing. It's really cut down on showings.
I would never allow a lockbox if I still lived in the house.
I would never allow anybody walking through my home without me there and no uppity realtor is going to be telling me otherwise.
I would basically even entertain buying a house if the owner insisted on remaining inside it while I looked. It makes me uncomfortable and I'd feel like I wasn't really taking the time or the close look I would want in order to make a good decision. This happened to us a few times years ago when we were buying an apartment and it was extremely off putting.
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, I began locking the storm door whenever I was home. I was fine with last-minute showings, as long as the agent called first, which wasn't always the case. There were a couple no-notice entries I thwarted that way.
