Multiple Showings
Today is about setting up multiple showings. Fun, fun!
What do I mean by 'setting up multiple showings'? One buyer/couple, several homes, one day, and an extra large coffee to go.
I'll let you in on a secret....real estate agents know when you like a home and when you don't. If you're in, through, and out in 10-15 minutes then it's a no. If you take your time, go back through the rooms a couple of times, spend 30-60 minutes at the house then it's most likely a yes. Unless the extended time is because the house is one of those weirdly configured ones and the buyer is just trying to make sense of it. Has been known to happen.
I shared our secret so you can get a better understanding of the difficulties real estate agents can face when setting up multiple showings. When an agent wants to show a house that agent puts in a showing request to the listing agent; the date of the requested showing, the time, and the length of showing time required. So, in terms of timing of showings, I've had buyers refuse to enter a house (0 minutes) and I've had buyers spend almost 2 hours at a home (120 minutes). Now, on to our current mayhem. Pay attention because there is math involved and a quiz when we're done. I have 10 houses I need to set up showings for. Buyers can spend 0-120 minutes in a house and I need to request times from the listing agents when we expect to be at each house. Do you see the dilemma?
Let's add to it. Some of the houses are vacant, some are occupied, meaning they might only allow showings at certain times. The houses are scattered within a 20 mile radius of each other so we will need to calculate driving time and order of showings into the equation. Is there any known construction on the routes we'll be taking? Back to the calculations.
What seems like hours later.....we've done all the calculations and figured out the order we want to show the 10 houses, so the next step is putting in the showing requests.
Done. And now we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Ping. Yes, we've received 2 approvals.
Ping. A denial. Showing request cancelled (usually this happens because an offer has been accepted on the home or it's inconvenient for the sellers to have the house shown at that time). Crap. Time to check the calculations to make sure I won't have a dead zone. Okay. We're good. I can make it work.
At this point, the showing requests can go a couple of ways. 1) The rest are approved so the day is set, 2) One or more are declined yet the agent can still make the timing work, 3) One or more are declined and now the agent needs to recalculate and try to shuffle some of the already approved showings to fill in gaps. Geez. If it was only as simple as what they show on HGTV.
So that's today's mayhem. In case you're curious, I'm still waiting to hear back from 6 of the 10 showing requests I put in. Fingers crossed.
And I was kidding about the quiz. Have a great week and see you next week!