Why is my Listing Agent not showing my house?
A question that we were recently asked was why we weren’t showing our own listing much to potential Buyers. It’s always interesting to hear what our Clients have to say because our ideas about what’s commonplace and what the “average” person understands is “normal” are sometimes two different things…
So here’s the way things are going these days and how things have evolved since I first became a Real Estate Agent in January of 2009…
Back in 2009 though the internet was pretty well used, we were still in the days of handing out weekly “catalogues” to potential Buyers who actually walked into our real estate office unrepresented and interested in buying what we were selling. They would speak to the Agent on duty or they would actually call the office landline and ask to speak to the Listing Agent. There were a ton of showings on houses because professional photography wasn’t really a thing yet, so it was very difficult to imagine what the inside actually looked like.
Before - when people decided to move forward from showings to offers, in “normal” times it would look like this… You see the property online, visit an open house, or drive by a sign and then call an agent - either the Listing Agent or a Buyer Agent that you know or was recommended to you. Then a first showing, second showing (sometimes third showing), you negotiate the offer with a financing and inspection clause so you can reallly give the house a once-over, and then firm up conditions and wait for closing day.
Over the years the “first showing” has shifted to the online portion so there are less actual sort-of-interested Buyers. By the time they actually come to the physical property they have done mortgage calculations, looked it up on Google Earth, checked out school boundaries and bus routes and called the internet company. So if you get to the “second showing” they definitely have some interest.
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Many Buyers make up their minds pretty quickly during that viewing whether they want to move forward or not. A rip of the bandaid so to speak.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is that with technology and the real estate profession evolving, Buyers don’t need to rely on the listing agent very often. Referrals are HUGE in our business and if you’ve been given the name of an Agent by someone YOU trust that trusts them, that’s the one doing the showing. Period, regardless of location.
Moral of the story - just because we aren’t showing it ourselves doesn’t mean we aren’t trying our best to get it sold. We want the best deal possible for you, whatever that means (and it’s different for different Sellers) and the way we get it done may just be best done through another Agent :)