Tenants might pay their rent, but they could be sabotaging your ability to sell at the same time!

This past week, I've shown more than 50 Central Florida properties to a multitude of Buyers. While most of the Buyers I am working with are first-time purchasers, they are savvy, educated and well prepared.

Thankfully, most of the properties I showed this past week were either vacant or owner-occupied and were easy to show...however, there were several that were "tenant occupied" and nearly impossible to show.

Now that the week is over and each of the Buyers have elected not to pursue any of the "tenant occupied" properties, I wanted to share the reasons why with Sellers and their Real Estate agents so that they might have some insight as to how their tenants might be sabotaging their sale.

Just this week, the Buyers and I encountered tenants who:

• Required an appointment to show the property. After four attempts to schedule with no response, this property was moved to the back of the Buyer's interest list
• Removed the key from the lock-box so that it couldn't be shown (and weren't afraid to tell me that!)
• Installed a dead-bolt lock on the interior of the home that could only be opened from the inside (so the key in the lockbox was useless)
• Left dirty dishes, clothes (including undies) all over the floor and had so much stuff crammed in the closets and scattered everywhere, that the Buyer couldn't see past the clutter and mess 
• Failed to show up at the scheduled "showing" time and since there was no lockbox, we couldn't get in at all
• Told me they were tired of showing the property and we'd have to "just wait" until they moved out to see it