Listing agents who take on homes that will be vacant should have their owners set up some agreement with someone to come check the home periodically. There are many reasons to have someone watch over the home such as being ripped off or trashed.
Or someone who quietly moves in and scares off a potential buyer.
I took some buyers back to a vacant home on a lockbox yesterday, a home that we had looked at a couple of days earlier and they wanted to have a second look before signing the offer that I had all ready for them.
Not expecting anything different from the other visit, meaning to find a totally empty house, we were met with a mattress for one on the floor in the living room right inside the front door (one of those lightweight ones and it neatly had a cover on it). Two or three hand carry bags packed with what looked like clean towels etc. Some outdoor chairs were neatly stacked next to it and one that seemed to have personal effects on it (obviously, I didn't touch anything), plus an old TV on the floor, unplugged). This was not what you would normally see on one of the carts homeless people wheel around. This looked like a clean visitor.
SO IT GAVE ME PAUSE, WAS THIS SOMEONE WHO HAD THE AGENCY/OWNERS APPROVAL TO BE THERE?
I called the listing agent and got voice-mail. Then I called the main brokerage number who said the agent was there but on the phone. I told the lady answering the phone what the problem was.
As a side note, do you think I should have gotten a call back from the agent or the agency? I think I should have, but I haven't! (This is a continuation from my previous two blogs about not getting responses back from listings agents.)
THE UPSHOT FOR MY BUYERS:
They were creeped out about the home that they were about to make an offer on.
We viewed another home and, within an hour, we made an offer on that one!!! (My buyers were leaving this morning, and they wanted to get this done before they left.)
NOTE TO LISTING AGENT:
This time your listing was invaded by someone who probably only wanted to stay overnight for free. Although no harm, no foul, except
YOU AND YOUR OWNER MISSED OUT ON AN OFFER
Maybe if you had responded and explained it all away, my buyers would still have gone through with the offer. But being in the office but not calling me back was the death-knell.
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