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#1. 1 hr ? 2 hr? 3 hr?
#2. How much notice do you let the buyers have to come look at your home?
I am sorry but when people call and tell me they need 3 hr. windows I flat out say no. I know they are looking at MANY homes in the area ...but that is ridiculous! The most I will go is 2 hr. time frame! Now we have one this evening between 6-8pm and that is a late til 8p but I will let it go lol...
I have had realtor call and ask if we can show on 15 min. notice, usually I need at least 45 min. to an hr. due to having kids! I did have one come in for 45 min. a few days ago and saw they were still there so we kept driving......side note: they picked a home without a basement! and backs up to a very busy road! My home is very competitively priced and we have the full basement and live in a quieter area of the development!
Neither of those time frames are inappropriate, but you'll increase your chances of showings by minimizing the advance notice that has to be given. I set my lock box times from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m.. I'm not sure if Realtors in your area use Supra locks, but that means that the locks will not release the key before 8:00 a.m. and after 8:00 p.m.
I typically request 1 hour BUT .... if the house in question is one of the last of a multitude of homes, I might do an hour and a half. At that point, the listing agent is aware of the situation and my timeframe.
Advance notice is up to the owner, but I'll agree with Sandy - the less restrictions you put on showings, the more your house will (or should) show.
I try to give a 45 minute "window" when I've got several showing scheduled in a day. Unless everything is right in the same neighborhood (rare with my clients), it's hard to gauge how long we'll be at each house (depends on how much they do or don't like it, for one thing). Travel time is easy - Mapquest is my friend for that even if I know the route I'm going to take - but time per house is the odd one.
I'm usually pretty accurate these days, but if we're running late, I'll call ahead as soon as I know.
If I at all can, I'll call the afternoon/evening before to set up the showings. Sometimes it's not (client pops up, is in town for one day to look at properties, I'll do the best I can), but if I have any advance notice at all, that's what will happen. Otherwise, an hour should be sufficient for a seller who is serious about selling their home, because they'll be keeping it relatively showing ready.
I allow 30 minutes per each house, so I give a 30 minute window for the first 3-4 showings, and then it will go out to an hour after that. I've never given more than a one hour window. If my clients need more than 30 minutes in a house, we schedule a second showing for their top ones and those I will schedule an hour apart.
Same here. I make appointments about 24 hours in advance of showing.
I also try to schedule showings of vacant properties ( on lock boxes) later in the day because it does not matter if we are running late.
I put time and effort into grasping what the buyer needs/wants upfront, and execute an extensive interview and when possible, see their current home or at least pictures of it, the interior and furniture.
Early on in the relationship, before trust has been established, it is common for buyers to want to see a place we just drove bye. I know it won't work for them ....but they want to determine that for themselves. In these cases, the appointments tend to be more spontaneous.
Never has one of my clients made an offer on a spontaneous showing.
I do my homeowrk, so my clients do not have to do so.
If the buyer is truly interested, they'll come back.
I think this is true if you tell them why. Don't just say no, sound reasonable. "I have kids and we can't get out that fast." or "I have to get the dogs out." I don't know maybe I just don't get spontaneous clients, but I can think of only once where I looked at homes with a buyer in the morning (had scheduled those appointments the day before) and then we expanded the criteria and I set up appointments in the afternoon. It was still a good two hour notice as I zig zagged a bit to look at the vacant ones first, giving homeowners some time to get cleaned up.
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The most I will allow is a 2 hr window. Actually my home is "by appointment only" because I work nights and sleep during the day. My realtor knows this and has been GREAT about my work/sleep schedule. She schedules showings when she knows that I will be leaving for work...never schedules them in the mid-day when she knows I might be sleeping. So I don't have to deal with that 15 min BS.
I had many buyer's agents request a 2 hour window--once I had a conflict and asked if they could narrow it down to an hour and they agreed...I always felt as a seller that two hours was way too long and that if things were planned better an hour should suffice (my listing agent told me she thought the agents who asked for the long windows must have been newer as agents from 'her day' never needed more than 45-60 minutes). I also had pets and kids to remove from the house (as well as straighten up after and remove all evidence of LOL), so I asked for at least an hour notice on showings as well. Most agents complied but I had plenty who called from my driveway and asked if they could come that minute---they always said it was an out of town CASH buyer on his way to the airport and if he didn't see it now he never would--we needed to sell so I would take dinner off the stove, round everyone up and take off. Of course none of them ever made an offer....
I think these days SOME buyers and their agents think they can treat sellers rudely because they know these are desperate times...asking for long windows, showing up late without a call (just great when you've been driving around for two hours with 3 kids, a dog and a cat in 95 degree weather--you go back in the house--there is no card and the house looks as you left it so you just have to assume they have been there--the kids start playing with the legos and you start making dinner---the cat coughs up a hairball and then you hear the key in the door and HELLO, it's the buyers 30 minutes outside of their 2 hour window!), not showing up at all (again no call to say--I'm late, or don't think I'll make it today), tracking mud through the house--well, let's just say I'm glad my experience is over and I really feel for all of you still in the middle of it.
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Now we have one this evening between 6-8pm and that is a late til 8p but I will let it go lol...
My home is very competitively priced and we have the full basement and live in a quieter area of the development!
