Scenario:
Buyer is in Canada. He’s an airline pilot so he pops into town occasionally for brief periods of time. He is interested in gated golf course condo communities.
Last week he let us know that he and his wife would be in town on Tuesday and wanted to look at a specific unit.
Alas, the showing instructions are “By appointment only, Monday – Friday only at 5:00pm”.
Okay fine. We call the listing agent last Wednesday. He actually picked up the phone which, as sad as it seems, was a surprise. We tried to set up an appointment for this Tuesday. He needed to talk to the owner and would “get right back to us”.
Friday rolls around, looking like someone has a different idea than we do of “getting right back”.
We call him. He didn’t have an answer. We reiterate our client will only be here on Tuesday.
Saturday morning, we get an email from the agent. It says we are good to go for showing. On Wednesday.
The lesson here for home sellers is two-fold:
1) If you want to sell your home, you need to make it readily available for showing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate that if no one can see your home, it is difficult to sell it. Restricting showings to specific days and times is not conducive to getting potential buyers into your home.
If you have to make it by appointment only, don’t take three days to confirm the appointment.
2) Make sure your agent is calendar savvy enough to know the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Technorati Tags: home selling tips, rocket science
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Why even take a listing that is impossible to show?
Oy.
Friday at 5:00? That’s very funny.
It sounds like this seller and agent were made for each other.
How about Friday at 10 PM? Seems like common sense would dictate that such things are bad, but obviously that isn’t the case…..
It’s just amazing how common this scenario is… sometimes you have to wonder if people really want to sell their property at all.
We could not view this property when my client was in town a few weeks ago because the available showing times are *not* noted in the listing. Even with two days notice I was unable to set up a different showing time.
Sounds like you’ve been having a bad month with other Realtors Jay. I’m not convinced these guys are motivated sellers; I wonder why they even list the property - seems like a buyer would be irritated from having to work around such a tight schedule.
It’s amazing in today’s real estate market that someone would make the buyer work so hard to see a home. The Seller’s agent obviously didn’t tell the Seller how much this is hurting their chance of selling.
I glad the majority of homes in my market, Jacksonville Florida, are on lockboxes.
Jay, I have several buyers looking for foreclosure deals and an amazed at the number of “short sale” agents who do not even return calls. I guess they are so use to telling buyers “allow lender up to 30-days to respond” they think they can do the same. It’s frustrating when trying to validate which homes to show clients. On another vein, lenders do not always get the message when they have an opportunity to
stop a family from entering the foreclosure realm.
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