Showing your Home
You've offered your home for sale. You’ve cleaned it from top to bottom, you’ve done all the staging your agent suggested. You've planted flowers and painted the front door so your prospective buyers will get that “WOW” first impression. What else can you do?
You can make it easy for your prospects to see everything and to focus on the house and imagine themselves living there. Here’s how:
Rule # 1: Leave home.
Some people are reluctant to leave their house with strangers, but staying is a big mistake. The agents who will show your home are professionals who subscribe to a code of ethics. You should feel safe leaving your home in their hands for a short time.
You need to leave because buyers often feel ill at ease when the owners are present. As a result, they:
- Won’t ask enough questions
- Won’t check closet space, cupboards, etc.
- Won’t measure to see if their furniture will fit
- Won’t discuss possible objections and figure out how to solve them
- Won’t stay long enough to get a feel for the house
In addition, when owners are present, they may present other distractions, such as TV, music, children, and pets.
Your goal is to sell the house, so you want these visitors to focus on the house and only the house. No matter how cute your baby or your new puppy is, you don’t want them to notice. And you certainly don’t want them to feel that they are interrupting your favorite show by being in the living room. You also don’t want them anxious to get out of there because they don’t appreciate your taste in music.
Rule # 2: Remove temptation.
You do need to trust your agent, but you should not expect your agent to be everyplace at the same time. Sometimes buyers bring along children or extended families… and sometimes they scatter throughout the house in spite of an agent’s best efforts to keep them together.
Most people are honest and wouldn’t dream of picking up something in a house. But why take a chance? With that in mind, put away small objects of value. And please, don’t leave $50 bills lying on the table. (Yes, people have been known to do that, especially when they forgot that a showing was scheduled.)
Rule #3: Remove your collections
You’ve probably spent a great deal of time and effort in arranging your collections for the most decorative effect. You’re proud of them, and have always been pleased to see people appreciate them. But now is not the time. You’re going to move, so start your packing by putting your beautiful collections in storage.
When your buyers are focused on looking at every item in a collection, they are not focused on seeing how your house can become their home. In fact, after they leave they generally talk only about your personal possessions.
Rule #4: Remove your pets.
When you leave, take the dogs with you. Not only are they an inviting distraction for animal lovers, they are a complete deterrent to non-animal lovers. No one wants to walk into a home and smell a cat litter box, and most people don’t want a dog jumping on them. Some people are so afraid of dogs that they won’t even enter the house if one is present.
That means that the solution is NOT to simply put the dogs in the back yard or the garage. If you have a kennel cage, that’s fine. But don’t let them be loose during a showing. Your prospects will want to look at the house, garage, and yard from every angle and the dogs could keep them out.
It doesn’t matter that they’re the most friendly, non-aggressive pets in the universe. Some people are afraid and nothing you can say will change that.
Rule #5: Resist the temptation to offer other items for sale.
Yes, there may be other things you want to sell, but when you offer your home for sale you want the potential buyers to focus on it, not on your furniture, your tools, or your doll collection. Drawing attention to anything but the home for sale can be counter-productive. Wait until you have a solid offer on the house before trying to sell the miscellaneous items.
If you absolutely cannot leave…
If for some reason you cannot leave the premises, take care to be as unobtrusive as possible. If the weather permits, take a book and go out in the yard… or putter in your flower beds. Be sure to take the dogs with you, and if you have no kennel, put them on a leash.
In inclement weather, keep yourself at the opposite end of the house from your visitors so that your agent can show your house to its full advantage and the buyers will feel comfortable looking.
Whatever you do, do NOT follow them from room to room. If they have a question, they’ll find you or your agent will call later.
Click here to contact me if you have any questions.
 |
|||||
|
|||||
 |
|||||
