Let my clients go! (and see your house!)

Ron Rothenberg
4 Buyers Real Estate

 

“Do they really want to sell this house?” asks my buyer, when I finally arrive with the keys.
 

 

We’ve been trying to look at this condo for two days. Yesterday, the broker said her assistant would leave the keys at the house, and I’d have to return them to her office, but the keys weren’t there. Today, I had to drive to her office, two miles away, in city traffic, to pick up the keys. Next, I need to return them immediately after the showing.
 

 

“I’m busy showing houses to my buyers, today, you understand,” explains the listing broker.
 

 

No, I really don’t understand.
 

 

How can I help my buyer to buy this house if I can’t show it? Or if it takes me an extra 45 minutes to pick up and drop off the keys? The house is completely vacant, and the seller has moved to New York. Does the seller even know that the broker is making it hard for me to show the house?
 

 

Sellers and brokers all understand the importance of showing the house, getting qualified buyers in to touch and peek, to prod, to think, and perhaps to fall in love. There’s really no excuse, in most cases, for making a house hard to see.
 

 

On the same list as those sellers and brokers detailed above are those who will only show the house during open houses, on one or the other weekend day, and not at any other time.
 

 

I have clients who observe sabbaths of one flavor or another, and they’re just not available for a good part of the weekend. I have clients who have life-and-death jobs that require them to work on weekends. If you’re going to put the house on sale on Friday, and expect all offers to be in by Monday, then sorry, you’re just not going to have these marvelously motivated buyers making an offer on your house.
 

 

I understand that many listing brokers are busy, I’m busy, too. But I have the option of referring out clients that I don’t have the time for, and they have the option of not taking listings of houses they don’t have time to sell properly.
 

 

I’ve also run across a surprising number of sellers who are selling their houses themselves, who make it hard to view their houses. Please remember the cardinal rule of real estate sales: if you don’t show it, you won’t sell it. Show it as much as possible.
 

 

If you’re not available to show it to most house buyers, if your job keeps you so busy that you’re only available three hours per week to show your house, then please, for your sake as well as mine, hire someone else to sell the house. That will be worth your while.
 

 

Also, please don’t give me the third degree on who I am, and who my client is, and how I do business – just show the house, please. I’m trying to introduce a very qualified, very motivated buyer to your house. That’s good for you.
 

 

Ok, now I feel a little better. Speak to you later, I’m going to get in my car and drive these darn keys back to the listing broker’s office.