If you are serious about selling your St. Petersburg area home or condo, it is important to allow Realtors easy access to the property. Since many buyers looking at properties in downtown St. Pete, St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, and the other Gulf beaches up to Clearwater, come to town for a short visit to look at homes and condos, you may only get one chance for a prospective buyer to see it.
We recently had a client in town over a weekend to look at homes in downtown St Petersburg, Seminole and Treasure Island. We had narrowed a huge list down to 15 active listings he had an interest in seeing. After spending almost two hours trying to set up showings for these properties, we found we could only show 10 of them. 1 out of 3 properties were unavailable.
I’ve heard a thousand excuses for a home being unavailable to show: the owners are dog-sitting; the dogs have to be put outside and the owners aren’t available; the agent has to be present (I definitely don’t have time for that); the owners have a birthday party (Saturday AND Sunday?); the listing is appointment-only and the agent didn’t get back to us (unfortunately all too common); the key isn’t in the lock-box. And on and on…
The fact is that it doesn’t really matter what the reason is. Unless our client is particularly interested in a property, we’re just going to move on to the next. This is a buyer’s market with a huge number of homes in inventory and there are plenty of homes to show.
I do understand it can be problematic and annoying to continually allow people into your home, particularly so if it has been on the market for a long time. But the sooner you get the right buyer in there, the sooner you can be finished with it. So here’s how you can make it easier for us real estate agents to sell your home:
Appointment-only: We recommend not making showings appointment only unless there is an unsafe condition present, such as an aggressive animal or structural issue.
Agent to Accompany:Definitley don’t make this a requirement. Real estate agents do not need, nor do they want, the listing agent present when showing a home. I will generally move on to the next listing without even calling if I see that condition.
Show your home or condo yourself: Another bad idea. It’s true that no one knows your home like you do, but I’ve shown thousands of properties so I can find the master-bath and determine the upgrades. I can’t do my job and point out the plusses and minuses if the owner is leading us on a tour. Trust me – you will only hinder the process.
Leave the house: This is very important. It is uncomfortable and distracting for a purchaser to tour at a home when the owner is present. Run an errand or take a short walk.
Owners phone number in the listing: Very good idea. We shouldn’t have to rely on the listing agent to grant us access to the property. We need to be able to call the owner and leave a message stating when we want to show the property if they aren’t home. You can always put “1-hour notice please” in the listing if necessary.
So, did we ever get to show the 5 unavailable properties to our client? No we didn’t. We never even called back. Did we write an offer on another property? Absolutely. The home inspection is this weekend…
