Showing Your Home
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Once you’ve listed your home, your agent should advise you on how best to have your home show it’s best. Please also refer to my section on Preparing Your Home for ways to get your home ready to show it’s best!
Ordinarily, your home is set-up for your maximum comfort and use. When you’re trying to sell your home, that should technically take a back seat to your new primary objective – to show it at it’s best and get you top dollar for your home.
These days, the new buzz word for preparing your home to show it’s best is “staging.” That’s because you are altering the presentation of your home and creating a stage-like effect. Much like set design in a play or movie, the objective is to create an “illusion” of sorts, to get potential buyers to picture themselves in their new home — not your home. It’s like when you walk into a furniture showroom… sure they can line all the sofas up next to each other… but what do they do? They ‘stage’ a living room, complete with accessories to make it as inviting as possible. That’s what sells furniture! That’s what can also sell homes.
Your agent should review how your home will be shown. If you choose the allow a lockbox to be placed on your home, know that any agent showing your home must still call your agent to get permission each time they enter your home. No one will barge in on you while you’re sitting down to dinner. If you’re in residence, you can request that your agent call you each time before you show the house. If my homeowners live in the home I have listed, as a courtesy, I try to call them as soon as I set an appointment to show, just to give them a head’s up that it is being shown at a particular time. For an unoccupied home, I try to update my homeowner at least once a week on the activity on their property, not finding it necessary to let them know each and every time it’s shown since they do not live in the house.
When you list your home, you can set up the system by which you want to be notified when your agent shows your house. As I mentioned, sometimes things can vary depending on whether or not you live in the home for sale or not. It’s entirely up to you so make sure you and your agent have this discussion!
Always Be Prepared:
The basic rule of thumb that anyone listing their home knows is to keep the house ready to show at any time. Your agent should have a check list of things that you should do each morning before you leave for work such as:
Wipe down all counters & mirrors in the kitchen and bathrooms.- Make sure the kitchen sink is clean & empty
- Put toilet seats & lids down
- Close the shower curtains
- Pick up towels and clothes
- Make the bed(s)
- Empty the trash cans
- Pick up toys
And don’t forget that first impressions mean a lot. Make sure the exterior of your home shows just as well as the inside. remove the leaf litter on the roof, clean out the gutters, pull the weeds, plant some colorful flowers. In other words, do what ever you can to improve the curb appeal of the home. Your agent should be able to suggest lots of inexpensive ways you can dramatically improve the look of your home to make it show it’s best!
Now for the important part:
Imagine it’s a Sunday afternoon and you are enjoying a day at home, relaxing. Then the phone rings and it’s your agent. Someone wants to see your house in ten minutes. What do you do? Whether you’re dressed in your jammies still with curlers in your hair… or not, do yourself this huge favor. Get in your car and go for a drive. Get out of the house while it is being shown.
Why?
The worst thing you can do when trying to sell your home is to be present for the showing. Sure, you know the house better than your agent… so why shouldn’t you be the one pointing things out? It’s about psychology. A buyer must feel comfortable inside the home. They need to be able to see themselves living there. You’ve already de-personalized your home, right? Why go through the trouble of de-personalizing your home if you, the person, are going to be in the home with the buyer? As long as the seller is still in the home, the buyer is going to be self-conscious. They are not going to relax and feel comfortable. They won’t open closets or cabinets, they won’t talk openly and discuss the merits of the house with each other or their own agent, they won’t crawl up into the attic, they won’t get a true feeling for your home. Usually, they will take a cursory glance around your home and leave.
So whatever you do, make yourself scarce. We live in a resort market, so often, on weekends, folks have company. There have been plenty of times when I’ve called an agent to show his/her listing only to be told that the sellers had company and the house couldn’t be shown. While this is perfectly legitimate, afterall, it is your home, you control what happens… I am still puzzled by that behavior. If my house was on the market and I had company over… as soon as my agent called, I would be pushing my houseguests out the door and taking them for a drive… “Ice cream anyone?” You never know if that buyer – the one who was prevented from seeing your home – was the one.
