(excerpted from the not-yet-titled sequel to Sell with Soul coming... sometime!)
... Before I tell you all about how to select the right homes to show your buyer, let me put your mind at ease about something.
Do some of your buyers seem to be doing most of the legwork finding the houses they want to look at? About half of mine are; they email me every day with their new list of houses they want to look at... and with every emailed list, I feel just a little bit more guilty. Isn't that MY job - to peruse the MLS searching for Just the Right Home for them? But they beat me to it and, between you and me, I'm happy to let them, guilt & all.
And you know what? They're happy to do it! Buyers have always wanted direct access to our precious MLS database and now that they have it, they're tickled. When I bought my first house back in 1994, I remember actually stealing borrowing my agent's MLS book when she wasn't looking and poring through it for hours. I hated waiting for her daily phone call with the details of new listings and always wondered if she was screening out The Right One for me!
So don't fret about proving your worth to a buyer by beating him to the MLS every day. Let him take control of that part of the buying process; there's plenty more value you bring to the table that he can't possibly do himself.
That said, I must confess that I miss the intimacy I used to have with the MLS when I was solely responsible for choosing the properties my buyers saw. Before the days of a public MLS or automated email notifications, I was in my MLS several times a day searching for new listings, which, by default, kept my finger on the pulse of my local market. While I still keep up on the comings and goings of my market area, I'm much less conversant on the specifics of it than I used to be.
Ah well...
Comments (16)Subscribe to CommentsComment