Every Wednesday is Realtor Tour day in the Benton and Linn county areas. This is a time when we agents get to view homes that are new to the market. Anne and I try to see 5 or 6 homes when we do this. It’s a great way for us to stay in touch with the market and an opportunity to see the homes before our clients do. When we view homes, there is a variety that we look at and we see it all! Some homes are presented better than others. Below are actual listing fails that we have encountered in our market place. Experienced agents will tell you how to handle these issues. Here are the Dos and Don’ts that we would share with our clients:
1. Don’t: leave a rotten, moldy, orange in your front flower bed which is located right next to the front door. We are all about composting but the location of your compost is key. Your front flower bed is not a key location for compost. The front flower bed is one of the first things a buyer will see when they walk up to the house. Impressions are everything, and if buyers start to think that the home hasn’t been cared for, it will greatly impact whether they will want to make an offer or not.
2. Do: keep the heat on! We walked into a home today that was nice and cozy. With snow in the forecast, its important to make potential buyers feel how cozy your home can be during the cold weather. Anne and I walk into many homes and we usually remember the homes that were freezing inside. When buyers are cold, they will want to spend less time in the home. Less time spent = less time to dream about making the home their own.
3. Don’t: put pet food in the front entry way when your home is being shown. This one seems like it should be obvious, but we’ve come across this twice in the last couple of weeks. Does anyone like the smell of pet food? Probably not many people. If you don’t like the smell of pet food, the potential buyers looking at your home for the first time probably won’t either. That means their first impression of the home is that it smells like pet food. The worst is wet cat food. This isn’t a great memory for buyers to store in their brains as they are comparing homes. If the pet food is on the front porch, buyers start to wonder if the neighbors are feeding stray cats. Or they wonder if the sellers left the cats behind in the freezing cold weather. Either way, we want to avoid negative memories associated with the house.
4. Do: keep doors to bedrooms and bathrooms open while your home is being shown. When you walk into a house that’s dark and the bedroom and bathroom doors are shut, it seems kind of creepy. It makes us think that someone could still be in there and the occupant didn’t hear us come in. Occasionally, we agents come across a seller or tenant who forgets that a showing was taking place and we can easily walk in on someone. This is not a great experience for the occupant or us as agents. Make it easier on the people who are trying to sell your home by keeping the doors to rooms open. That way there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that we can see the room.
Stay tuned every week for the latest listing Do’s and Don’ts. Avoid having your own home on this list by consulting with the Fahy Real Estate Professionals for trusted real estate guidance.
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