Show your home

A - Successful Showings: Want to increase your odds?

Nervous about showings? Keep in mind that the buyers' focus will be on the property, not on you. After a few showings, you’ll see that it’s all really quite simple. 

Successful showing guidelines:

• Greet the buyers and point them toward your home’s living areas. These offer the most decorating drama; bedrooms the least. If first impressions are uninspiring, then it’s an uphill battle to build excitement.

• One seller should be the greeter. Too many people creates an awkward situation.
  
  If the buyers have a question or an objection, they may not express themselves if they feel “outnumbered” with multiple sellers present. A concern that is never stated can never be answered. You don’t want your potential buyers leaving with unanswered questions.
  
  However, a spouse or friend should be close at hand (on the patio, deck, back yard, etc.). 

• Avoid making buyers feel like they are disrupting your life. Your family should not be watching TV or “staging” a family game of Monopoly. If buyers feel uncomfortable, they are inclined to leave. The atmosphere should encourage buyers to linger and picture themselves living there.

• Printed info on your home should not be handed out when buyers enter. Instead, give it to them after they have toured the main living areas. You do not want them burying their head in a booklet and missing features, especially as they tour the most important parts of the house.

If they ask for an "info" sheet upon entering, start them touring. Let them know you'll get them one. 

• Let the prospects roam. They should have some privacy as they wander about. People need the opportunity to digest and discuss the offerings and benefits of your home by themselves.

A time for listening:

• As the conversations increase, guard against obliging them to focus on what you think is significant. Living space, entertainment areas, patios, and decks are but a few features that represent potential benefits–in varying ways to different buyers. 

• Information-gathering questions can provide valuable information about their needs and desires.
  
  Asking the prospects where they’re from is a natural opening question. A non-threatening remark could be, “Are you familiar with the neighborhood?” Later, you can beef up the conversation with questions like, “Have you been looking long?” or “What kind of a house do you live in now?”
  
  Your subtle questions will reveal their motive for moving. It could be that a relative lives in the neighborhood, they have concerns about schools, they could benefit from public transportation, etc.
  
  Info gathered here will be helpful later. Knowledge of the buyers’ likes, dislikes and motives will come in very handy during negotiations. This is an advantage you have selling by-owner. When agents show your home, you may not meet the buyers until the closing, if at all.

• Do not get caught up in “This is where Boomer learned to ride a bike” and other trips down memory lane. It’s awkward for the buyers. And honestly, do they really care?

• Everybody should be on the same page.  You may decide that you don’t want to divulge everything to prospects. For instance, certain information–closing date of your new home, a job transfer–could reveal your motivations, which will compromise your negotiating position. If you have a partner, have agreement to the answers you’ll be giving. 

Safety precautions:  

You're allowing strangers into your home. Safety precautions should be observed, and that includes taking all prescription drugs out of view (and out of the medicine cabinet) for any showings. Valuables should be concealed in a safe location.

Trust your instincts–if you feel uneasy, decline personally showing a remote area like the basement, as the buyers can look at it by themselves. Any real estate agent doing a showing faces the same situations daily; incidents are extremely rare.                             

Be sure to review the hints supplied in the PREPARE section plus the discrete open house tactics in the SHOW section that will help maximize the attendance and make it much more successful.