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With this listing service did you say it was by appointment only? I really only need 30 mins notice. It seems some agents expect families not to actually live in an occupied home.
It was like an answering service or call center, where people called us daily and set appointments. Some were set in days in advance, but some would say, "We have an agent who wants to show your house today at 2." Once or twice, we had some that wanted to show within the hour. It was super fun with an infant in the house.
Generally, if you really want to sell your house, you will be flexible and do everything to make it easy and not limit showings in any (reasonable) way. Technically showings are by appointment, so there's no real reason to say that.
Problem agents have to show a property. It is a Sunday afternoon, and they have a real good buyer with them. Flakes do not shop for homes on Sunday is something a lot of home sellers told me. They are really serious ready to buy buyers. As I never sold single family homes handling investors, I can only take the words of some of the best agents around.
The buyer has not found something they like so far, and the agent goes to additional properties that may fit the buyers needs and wants. Yours pops up, and is near which is the reason for the short showing time. It could not be planned in.
You told them you needed a half hour before they could come. You are telling the agent to sit in the car with anxious potential buyers till they can see your home. The agent turns to the next home on the agenda and they bypassed your home. The buyer likes that home, so they start negotiating a contract on it. Yours is completely forgotten, as it is no longer under consideration.
When an agent asks for a real short notice showing of your home, it is for a reason. They are mobile and cannot wait around for a half hour, or an hour, without showing their buyer a potential home. It is kind of the old saying, "You snooze, you lose." Those short notice showings, are done when the buyer wants to buy and they will only buy a home they can get into and see.
The old rule of real estate is: The harder it is for an agent to get a potential buyer into a home, the longer it will take to find a buyer, the biggest need for price drops, and the harder it is to find a buyer for the home.
It's not a listing service. It's a showing service via a call center. Chances are your agent doesn't want to pay for this service if s/he is not even willing to act as the middle man for showings. Reading on city-data I know there are a few places where buyer's agents directly call the seller for showings, but it is not the norm in most places.
Our home has been on the market for 35 days. We've had 14 showings in that time. My kids have been troopers but it's tiring to always be on call. It's was a quiet Sunday in my home. The kids were enjoying the A/C & computer games. The mister & I considered making some yummy foods. I sent him to the market and started lunch. Within 10 mins of me starting lunch I get a phone call from an agent. He wants to bring his clients by in 15 mins. I explain I need to clean up the lunch prep and get the kids and pets out of the home and ask for 30 mins. He accepts. I panic, do our pre-show check list and scurry out the door. With minutes to spare, we wait in our vehicle a few houses down the street so we can gauge when we can return home. The agent never shows. I text him and he doesn't respond. I'm aggravated with the lack of civility. I wouldn't think this is common but something similar has happened 2 other times. How can I better screen agents so I'm not wasting my time?
You can't. This is actual quite common. Also, if you stay in the neighborhood where you can see the house, you'll find that they might claim they came when they didn't. We had one that stayed outside the house talking on his cell phone while the couple went through our house alone. People sometimes take their dogs through the house with them. You'll get no shows and they don't bother to call.
We have bought/sold 8 houses and it is always the same.
Please always put anything that could be put into someone's pocket away because at least 1/2 the realtors that showed us properties did not follow us throughout the house.
Another interesting thing is that we never expected to be shown a house the same day we made an inquiry about it. Who needs to see a house in 20 minutes or they wouldn't be interested anymore? A lot of people like to "look" at houses so be prepared.
Y Who needs to see a house in 20 minutes or they wouldn't be interested anymore?
1) People that are already in the car with their agent and visiting your neighborhood to look at a different house that is listed. And they drove by your home and saw the For Sale sign, and like it. And wanted to see it within 15 minutes as soon as they are done looking at the home 4 blocks away. After all, they are already in 'house hunting' mode. Scheduling another day when all parties (husband, wife, realtor) are all available might take another week - because everyone has busy lives. This is, IF the buyers live in the same area. Often they don't....
1) Out of town buyers: These folks often work, so they are in-town for 2 days(often a weekend), and they are visiting many homes with their agent, with the intent to pick out a home during that weekend trip. They are usually relocating from another state, or another city that is far away. They are working so quickly, picking areas they like, areas they dislike...that it's tough to pre-plan ahead of time exactly which homes they will see. Maybe they found a subdivision they liked and it was unplanned to go there. But it meets all their criteria and they have fallen in love with the area.
A former co-worker of mine was house hunting with his agent. he had to use the restroom when they were driving through the area so his agent detoured into a vacant spec home in a new subdivision. He ended up buying the exact spec home that he stopped at to use the restroom.
Some serious buyers won't come back to your home. Because they have too many other homes to see and because they are in a major hurry to buy a home right away and they have lots of home visits planned. Waiting 30 minutes might throw off their entire schedule. Maybe Sunday was the last day of their house hunting trip.
Last edited by sware2cod; 07-26-2015 at 06:59 PM..
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the listing agent was not involved at all in arranging the appointment??? I say get a new sellers agent....like yesterday.
I've never left my home so potential buyers could come and see it. I also never allowed what used to be called a lock box. It is still my home & I do not want strangers walking through every room in the house when no one is there. Agents with or without buyers, potential buyers or even looky-loos could call my agent who would then call me. There would be an agreed upon time, their agent or mine would come with them. I would do my best to make sure the house & everything in it was looking the best possible. But so what if you're making lunch. That's what happens in homes. It might make a potential buyer more interested by seeing the current owners enjoying their home.
And houses I looked at often had their owners at home. Sometimes questions were asked between the buyer & seller. Why is that a problem? Sometimes these agents want too much control. I had one friend who had a lock box on her front door. Her doll cradle that her father made her when she was a little girl, disappeared one day. They couldn't say definitely an agent or someone an agent gave a key, took the cradle, but the house will sell without putting priceless heirlooms at risk.
I agree with you about lock boxes. Of course, this time I have the leisure of retirement and can be home most all the time.
But when I sold my first house, I cannot tell you the number of times I came home and found the house unlocked, lights all turned on, air conditioning blasting because they had "tested it", etc.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the listing agent was not involved at all in arranging the appointment??? I say get a new sellers agent....like yesterday.
Yes, this seemed a bit off to me as well.
Why are you (the owner) taking calls from agents of prospective buyers??
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the listing agent was not involved at all in arranging the appointment??? I say get a new sellers agent....like yesterday.
You are not considering the listing agent may not have even been available when such notice was needed to see a particular home. Listing agents are not sitting 24/7 waiting to arrange showings of a home. We were not talking about a showing for the following day, or the following week. We were talking about a prospective buyer was in the neighborhood, and wanted to see the home now, not tomorrow. These type of drop in showings, are one of the biggest sources of sold homes.
Years ago in the Silicon Valley one of my brother in laws and his family had found a step up home for sale and wanted to sell their home in the Silicon Valley. My brother in law had just finished mowing their yard, and preparing to see a broker on Monday to list the home. A Realtor showed the house next door, and when the people came out my brother in law was in his yard doing final trim on bushes and trees. He asked them if they were going to be his new neighbors. The man said no. They could not find a home in the area that they liked. What they really wanted was a two story like my in-laws, but there were none available. He told them he was placing his home on the market on Monday. They asked to see it, and he showed it to them. the agent just followed them around looking sick as he saw he was loosing a prospect as they loved the home. When they got back to the living room, they said they would buy the home. After a few minutes with nothing happening, my brother in law asked the agent why he was not writing up the sale. He caught on, wrote up a listing and a sales contract right then. Instead of getting paid just for the sale, he got also paid for bringing in the listing. He went from being sick about losing a sale, but became a very happy man real quick. The home was about 50% higher than ones he had been showing. He got both the listing and sales commission.
This demonstrates how buyers become interested in a home, when they are in a neighborhood they like. They want to see the home immediately that day. When they are unable to see it for half an hour or an hour, they move on to other homes and purchase other homes. That is one fact, about the real estate business.
The homes that are hard to show, are the ones that stay on the market for a long time.
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