Best Methods for Showing Homes
How to stage a home for showings and open houses can be a matter of choices. There are books, articles and online sites that give you all the advice that you will ever need. Seller’s agents are using these resources to learn how to stage a house, scent or un-scent a room and serve the best appetizers. For Buyer’s agents, it can be a different story.
There are certain things that a Buyer’s agent can do before they start the tours of the possible homes. These are Best Practices and can help the role of the Tour Guide and make the clients feel confident and comfortable, which helps in the entire process from introduction to purchase.
Doing your homework first is the major rule of thumb. Before you start the tour of homes, make sure that you have selected the right homes that are in the financial perimeters of the client. Having the Talk with your prospects to get a feel for their taste and budget before showing them houses will save you both time in the long run.
Before you leave for the tour, make sure that you have all of the listings agents’ contact info in advance so you can make a quick call or send a text message if any questions come up during the day.
Home showings give you the opportunity to show off a bit to your prospects and clients with your professionalism and your understanding of real estate ins and outs. You can also point out certain attributes of the neighborhood and the town along the way. Make sure that you have your route planned out and all the papers for each home organized for the order of the showings.Technology can significantly streamline the home showing experience. Map your every move using GPS. After the showings, send your clients reports containing the property information for each one on the tour just as a refresher.
Before you leave for the home showings journey, give the buyers a guide to help them sort out their opinions and remember which properties they liked most. Create a guide that is designed for your type of clients. It can be something with home photos, neighborhood data, and a checklist of home features for each property. The important thing is for buyers to record their thoughts on each property so they can review the homes at the end of the day and decide how they want to move forward. Each of your clients are different and so are their real estate needs. You are going to have to use “home showing strategies” that are designed specifically to the client. As the buyer’s agent, you want to walk your client through each listing in whatever manner works for them. If they are first time buyers, you may need to encourage them to see the finer details of the home and you should point out under-the-radar features, such as a new water heater or new flooring. If they are veteran home buyers, you don’t want to oversell a property. They know what they are looking for and if you hype it up too much before the showing, buyers may feel the home doesn’t meet their expectations. In preparing for a showing, it’s good idea to tell the customers about all of the home features that match their search criteria. However, it’s important to also let the home speak for itself.
After each property showing, talk with your buyers. Ask questions to narrow down what features they especially liked and what features they didn’t. Knowing this information will be invaluable as you continue to search for new listings and properties to show your clients. Keep track of all of the notes and comments about each of the properties you previewed, as well as thoughts and comments from the buyers and any other information that will help you later in the selling process.
When the home tours are finished and you have grabbed a cup of coffee to talk and analyze, continue to follow-up with your clients regularly on new listings and as they become available. Send a thank you card for allowing you the opportunity to show them properties. Follow-up is essential to keep the real estate ball rolling.
To be successful in real estate you have to be able to do more than just close the deal. You need to effectively manage and grow a small business. That means finding clients, keeping them, and motivating them to buy or sell. At, Everest Direct Mail & Marketing, we help build quality lead pipelines through consistent marketing and client relationship management. We will help you customize and send marketing materials that are written and designed to connect with today’s consumer. We will send drip email, direct mail or Multi Channel campaigns with our pre-built real estate marketing materials. We will create content including listing flyers or monthly newsletters. We will help you consider the various types of homeowners when determining the type of content to use in your direct mail campaign: Probate owners, Absentee owners, FSBOs, Expired and withdrawn listings and Owner-occupied.
