In real estate, lot listings can be seen as easy, low-effort money. Put up the sign, plug in the data on the MLS, and wait for a buyer.
If someone expresses interest, you don’t have to schedule a showing or unlock a door. You can just tell a prospective buyer to drive over by themselves and if interested, you’ll write up a contract, right?
Wrong!
Here is why you should take the time, everytime, to go with buyers to look at lots:
1. If the buyer does want to buy the property and you don’t have a buyer’s agent agreement, who will they call? You? Or the number on the sign at the lot? Think about it.
2. Buyers often struggle to imagine a home on a lot. You can add value to the property by helping explain how a home may sit on the property. Paint them a picture of life on this property and help them want to buy it.
3. Typically, people looking at lots really want a home, they just haven’t found it yet. They are about to give up searching and build.
But we’ve had cases where the lot visit turned into a home sale. In one such instance, an agent showing a $25k lake lot instead sold the $1.2M home next door. The agent spent time with the buyers at the lot and helped them when they saw the neighboring home was for sale.
How much missed commission would it have cost this agent had they not joined the buyers to look at the lot?
4. Time looking at any property, homes or lots, is time where you can better understand your client and their interests, needs, and desires. In other words, your chance to better serve your client.
5. In market after market, across multiple state, I find a majority of the top agents typically sell everything. Low-end lots to multimillion dollar homes. Have the habits of these winners.
6. People who buy lots usually build homes. People who own homes, including those they built, will eventually sell these homes.
When that times comes, you want to be remembered as a great agent, not just one that passed the work off to the buyer.
7. As the old adage goes, if you don’t take care of your client, someone else will.
Lots may be seen by some as the scraps of real estate in many markets, but I see them as a gateway to opportunity, as a great place to improve service skills, and a test of agent’s service attitude.
Be great. Take care of all your clients, every time, even those who may only buy a lot (this time).
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