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The only time 24 hours notice is appropriate, IMO, is if you have an sick or elderly resident that you have to make elaborate arrangements for -- you may have to let the caregiver know, it may interfere with scheduled rest or at-home therapy, etc.
We've sold five houses since 2005, and this short notice thing has happened with each and every one.
Not only do we have dogs, but my husband works a very odd schedule, and is often asleep until the afternoon.
I once had an agent knock on the door with her clients just out of the blue. I had to ask them to come back in 20 minutes. I wasn't even dressed yet. But I threw on some clothes, saddled up my big dogs, and made it work. They were there for five minutes. It so was not worth it.
But you just never know, do you.
NOTE TO AGENTS: The only worse thing is an agent who books, and then never shows and never cancels. Meanwhile, I've rearranged my life and am left waiting for you and your clients. Inconsiderate.
When we were selling our last house, we agreed to 1 hour notices. Buyers don't want to wait. We were happy to put up with this inconvenience to get as many possible buyers in. We sold in 3 days, so it worked. I think sellers who want 24 hours notice are hurting themselves. It then sounds like they are hiding stuff that needs time to get hidden or removed.
Not necessarily - they might be terrible housekeepers or have the logistics of trying to find a place for the pets or little ones.
Not necessarily - they might be terrible housekeepers or have the logistics of trying to find a place for the pets or little ones.
Especially if they work and they have pets they need to get out of the house for the showing. They may need to get approval from work to take an odd lunch hour so they can run home to get the dogs out of the house.
When we put our house on the market, we left town for 10 days. It went under contract the second day, but I didn't want to cut our time away short to go back home. It made sense for us because we have 4 large dogs and two cats and we wanted them out of the house for showings.
The only time 24 hours notice is appropriate, IMO, is if you have an sick or elderly resident that you have to make elaborate arrangements for -- you may have to let the caregiver know, it may interfere with scheduled rest or at-home therapy, etc.
Or if it's a rental house that has tenants living there.
Whatever. Then be available during those times. All showings will be booked into those time slots and you may even have more than one show up at the same time, which benefits you.
By doing that, you will miss out on a lot of views and potential offers. Many folks relocate and are on huge time crunches. Some realtors SUCK at calling other realtors back to show homes. We we were house hunting. There were 3 houses we REALLY wanted to see.....never saw any of them! One was my dream house based on the photos online. We tried for 3 weeks - even after we fly back home - to schedule a viewing. The relator NEVER called ours back. They sold it over a year later for less than half price! Really makes you wonder what people are thinking. Do you REALLY want to sell?
House is listed on a Wed with "no showings until open house". They have open house Sat/Sun, and offers due by 5PM Tue. Usually that's all it takes to sell a house in this neck of the woods these days. It's crazy.
We had "call and go" in our showing notes when we sold our home last year. We moved out to a hotel for 3 days while it hit the market and showed so it could remain clean and we wouldn't kill ourselves trying to keep it clean -- best decision EVER. We had 8 showings in one day.
The house before that we had people pull up in front of the house and call from the car. I didn't love that at all but that was because we were still living there and I had a dog, toddler and a 4 month old to get out. There we had one hour notice.
Kids or not, you should expect to wake up every day as if today is the day THE Buyer will come see your home and make an offer.
That's how we approached selling our NY house 6 years ago. After the kids were in bed everything was put away, cleaned, tidied, every other word you can think of for making the house "show ready". The next day they were off to school and we repeated the process. I could never live like that every day (some people do) but we wanted to sell the house and it worked.
If you are in an area that is hot for relocations, you should be even more prepared for last minute showings. When we were looking here in NC, we had a day to look at houses. We were looking at a house on a cul de sac and really didn't like that it backed up to the neighborhood pool. There was a house on the other side of the cul de sac that was for sale and we thought we should see it. The family was outside riding bikes - RE agent called the scheduling service and the people said NO. He was like "really? Because we're right here, looking at them. They aren't even in the house. And my clients are only here for a day". NO.
House never sold and has been on and off the market since. I think it's a rental now.
Two of the houses I've purchased were first seen at short notice. The first house was vacant, so there were no problems. The second was a Sunday afternoon, and my agent (my mother-in-law; avoid this arrangement if you can LOL) had been ignoring my requests to see the house. We were in the car looking at other houses one afternoon, and I asked her to call again about the house, and we were able to see it within a half hour. The owner was home, and continued doing yard work while we looked at the house. Afterward, we joined him and the neighbor on the front porch and gained some valuable information about the neighborhood.
I can be out of my house within a half hour to accommodate a showing. It's not ideal and not something I'd insist upon as a buyer if other arrangements were possible, but sometimes things happen.
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