How To Show Your House
By Mark & Annmarie Lenson
People Like Us…….People Trust Us
Put Our Experience On Your Side……..We Sold Almost 800 Homes
In General:
The property itself should look well kept on the outside and freshly painted. On the inside, when a buyer first walks into the house, it should appear uncluttered, open, light and bright. (Paint is cheap and goes along way.) Counters in the kitchen and bathrooms should not be cluttered, and walkways into a room (like a bedroom) should not have a dresser on one side and a chest on the other side when you first step into the room. When you first walk into a room, you should be in the room itself, not accompanied by furniture on both sides of you.
This is an important consideration because even a large room can appear to be smaller and cluttered if there is too much furniture in it.
Showing a home yourself:
This is almost impossible to do without coming off too eager or desperate, talking too much, saying the wrong thing (since you do not know the buyer's want or needs), or saying something you should not have said, which is very typical, especially since, again, you do not know the buyer’s preferences.
When Realtors Show Your House. Please Leave: When Realtors are showing your house, please leave. One of the most common errors homeowners make is to stay in their house while it is being shown. Why not? The homeowner knows it better than anyone else right? If the homeowner stays in the house during the showing, the buyer typically says how beautiful the house is; that it is gorgeous; just what they’re looking for; I love it; I’m going to come back Thursday with my spouse; etc., etc., and you never hear back from them - and your house stays on the market, unsold.
If the homeowner is not home, it frees the Buyer up to say anything about the house they would like while not fearing being overheard by the homeowner and insulting the homeowner. You do not want the prospective buyer and Realtor in their car driving away when the buyer brings up the objections. That is too late. If the homeowner is not at home and the buyer were to bring up the negative aspects of the home, the Realtor could paint a picture right then and there (while still in the house) and overcome the objections. Solving the negative aspect of the house immediately is what makes this sale.
Another reason is that buyers are usually uncomfortable when the seller is present. They tend to feel reluctant to spend much time in another person's home. The buyer feels they are violating the homeowner's privacy. Homeowners want for buyers to stay as long as they can to give their home the buyer's full attention, mentally placing furniture in the home and painting walls in the buyer's own colors, etc..
Silence often times will un-nerve the homeowner. Ergo, the homeowner may pop up with, "This is a closet," at the same time the buyer is mentally placing their living room furniture - an exercise no seasoned agent would interrupt. When the Seller is around, Buyers tend not to open the oven or cabinet doors or doing any of the other "get acquainted" gestures.
If the above is not reason enough, here is another. Realtors cringe when homeowners talk to the buyers directly. The homeowner innocently tries to sell the buyer on an attribute of the house. (As mentioned earlier.) The seller does not know the buyer. The item highlighted could precisely be the item the buyer does not want in a house. The Realtor having interviewed the prospective buyer, and being experienced going through homes with the buyer, knows what to say, or what not to say, and how to paint the picture. When the homeowner talks to the buyer, it has been likened to walking in a mine field.
Let the Realtor do their job.
Homeowners hire an agent to do a job....allow them to do it by following their suggestions for maximizing the chances of having a sale. Be it a Broke
