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My cat would yowl for 8 hours straight if I put him in a crate. Pretty sure that would be much more of a turnoff for buyers walking through a house than a simple request to look at their feet as they're walking into and out of a room.
My problem that I'm going to encounter is that I just put down new carpet in all of the bedrooms, and I don't let the cat in those rooms. I can leave the doors closed in the morning, but unless I leave signs that say "Please close door, cat not allowed inside", viewers are going to walk in and leave the doors wide open when they walk back out.
If there is a cat and you don't get much notice about showings, get an extra large dog crate. Put in a litter box and a super fluffy comfortable bed and leave the cat locked up. The cat doesn't do much besides sleep all day anyway. Better to crate the cat than to have a careless viewer let the cat out to be hit by a car.
You really must put up with a bit of inconvenience if you want to sell your house.
Yep. On our realtor's advice, we sold our house empty, so we were able to avoid the hassle of strangers rifling through my granny panty drawer But around here, homes sell better empty and it sold very quickly.
My problem that I'm going to encounter is that I just put down new carpet in all of the bedrooms, and I don't let the cat in those rooms. I can leave the doors closed in the morning, but unless I leave signs that say "Please close door, cat not allowed inside", viewers are going to walk in and leave the doors wide open when they walk back out.
They will leave the doors open regardless of signs. Along with leaving the lights on and every other irritating thing possible.
and so the question becomes again .... do you want to sell or not? Not everyone is going to (want to) follow the same rules and habits that you do.
There's a new listing in my market that has declined 2 appointments I've set 5+ hours in advance. They went on the market Thursday, and then I find out they're not having any showings this weekend because they're hosting a wedding.
Not only strange listing times annoy me, but special instructions like "make sure the cat doesn't escape." If you're showing a house, take the cat and/or other pets with you!!! That kind of eliminates all potential buyers with allergies or aversions to animals.
Lol...we had our house up for sale last year....and we had 2 cats. But had no showing restrictions, really. We couldn't just take our cats to work with us. Our place was very clean and we just prayed the cats wouldn't ruin any possible sale. Luckily, we sold it in 72 hours.
Some buyers seem to have a distorted view of selling one's home ... or, for whatever reason, are only reluctantly going through the motions of trying to sell.
It's not like interested buyers are lining-up around the block just to get a glance at a particular house! Really! -- Unless the house is highly unique or priced waaaay under market (or perhaps it's an auction sale/foreclosure?), why would a potential buyer even bother trying to 'jump through such bizarre 'timing hoops'?
and so the question becomes again .... do you want to sell or not? Not everyone is going to (want to) follow the same rules and habits that you do.
There's a new listing in my market that has declined 2 appointments I've set 5+ hours in advance. They went on the market Thursday, and then I find out they're not having any showings this weekend because they're hosting a wedding.
Well, that's the silliest thing ever. If I knew I was hosting some sort of event I wouldn't list the house until after, especially knowing that a new listing always generates new interest - which is exactly what a seller wants! "Yes, my house is for sale, but you can't see it" is so counteractive isn't it!
I had 1 hour to get house ready for showings. I thought that was ridiculous, but 1 1/2 hours per day availability is equally ridiculous. It's just that it shows how the seller is not gonna cooperate much would be the problem for me.
Where are they supposed to take them? Maybe on weekends, but if someone is working all day, they can't just bring their cat or dog with them. And at least where I live, it was common to get a short amount of notice for a showing (1-2 hours) so it's not like there was time to go get them, depending on how far away you are from work and if you take public transportation, etc.
We told our realtor we wanted a 2 hour notice. We have 3 kitties and 3 Shih Tzu. I needed to be able to catch the kitties and crate them and the pupdogs. Then I moved the litter boxes to my trunk, picked up the water dishes, vacuumed then put all of the critters in my car and we went and parked by a nearby lake. At first he said no an hour, then when I told him what I was doing he said you sure you don't need 4 hours. He was impressed I took the time to remove the litter boxes from the house.
One thing I did tell him was if we couldn't catch one of the kitties the showing either needed postponed or they could come while I was still there because nobody was coming in my house with any of my furbabies still inside.
We just moved to the Denver area last year. During our housing survey I was shocked at how many cats we found running inside houses. And one even had a loose dog. I just can't imagine leaving a cat or dog in a house to be shown, even if it was crated. I guess I'm too paranoid something would happen to the critter.
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But around here, homes sell better empty and it sold very quickly.
