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Surviving a Real Estate Agent Tour

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.

That started up in Glendale, with not a drink to sip.

Yes, that rhyme was terrible. But blame it on the general malaise caused by surviving a three-hour home tour this morning.

Home tours, to my mind, are the real estate agent equivalent to an Open House. The vast majority of agents on tour generally are there not because they have buyers and not because they want to see the available inventory but rather because the rules of the tour state they need to be present to have their listing included.

REAL ESTATE MARKETING - ACTION VS. THE APPEARANCE OF ACTION

I equate the average home tour with an Open House because the likelihood of a sale coming from either are remarkably slim.

With a traditional Open House, a qualified buyer needs to come across the house, stop the car, walk through the house, fall in love with the house and then write an offer - preferably before finding another house. That the one, best buyer will be driving past the one, right home for them during a 3-hour window on a Sunday afternoon is somewhere just past unlikely.

Agent tours are much the same. The odds of a property being on the market but unseen by the agent who has a client looking for just that home are slim. With the wide variety of avenues by which homes can be viewed, odds are either the buyer herself or the agent already has seen the home. There are no surprises.

So why do agents participate? Because they then can proudly show their sellers the stack of business cards and tell them how many agents viewed their house, as if to say 37 Phoenix real estate agents viewing a home is better than one agent with a buyer who writes an offer after they leave.

Both Open Houses and broker tours provide sellers with the illusion of agent activity, even in the absence of actual activity. And many sellers are comforted by that, since in most cases it’s difficult to verify what exactly the agent is doing.

(I’d like to think my sellers have more reassurance than most. Enter “11530 S. Morningside”, the Estrella Mountain Ranch listing we viewed today, into Google and you’ll quickly see a small slice of where my listings can be found.

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT DALTON'S ARIZONA HOMES BLOG

Posted by Jonathan Dalton on 05/09/2007 05:32 PM

Comments (7)

marketing, open houses

7 Comments on Surviving a Real Estate Agent Tour

MAY

2007

Love the poem!! Those caravans are visible every Wednesday out here. I did one once, YEARS ago, with a company that pretended not to require it. It was sooooo tedious. I would have preferred to peruse the old black and white photos in the weekly mls book than go look at listings- if I had a buyer, I'd find the listing. I felt badly when the homeowners welcomed the group, imagining that anyone there had a buyer- the odds were, as you've indicated, NOT in their favor...yet...there we all were, hoping that one of the sellers would have food...

Excellent, Jonathan. Echoes my sentiments for the most post. While I have not ever had a sale result from a Broker Open, in our market we are finding that is happening 2-3 times per week. But it is the new listings, not the old dogs. No surprise. And many agents tend to go the properties with food, or the higher end/fun to look at properties, unless they have a specific buyer in mind, which I think is rare.

Jeff

Except, I have to disagree with the open house thing- you resale guys (both sexes) are just too independent to sit around a house, even for a few hours, and your minds wander. Having done the new home sales thing forever, it only takes that one, so the more times you put yourself out there in the house, the better- numbers game. Just don't fall asleep in the car out front, like a guy a few weekends ago had done when I visited...

Cool post, Gilligan...I mean Jonathan. I actually think agent tours are the best way to learn the inventory. It's a pain, but not so bad that an Advil won't help.

I do agree that home tours can be tedious, time consuming, and nonproductive in respect to securing a buyer for a particular home. Here is another aspect to home tours. How many times have your sellers not wanted to hear what you recommended them to do?

At our brokerage we do "caravans" as well but include a short survey for each house to be completed by each agent in attendance. Evaluations include opinion about price, curb appeal, inside appearance, and suggestions for improvements and/or comments. The respective listing agents share this feedback with their sellers who often act on it accordingly with price reductions and/or repairs, etc.

In this manner, the home tours become a tool that the selling agent can use to point out specific problems to sellers.

Laurie - Did you check the fridge? Just kidding ... And I've never fallen asleep in the car. I have dozed off once in the living room but it wasn't my fault. The Arizona Cardinals were on the TV. I agree it only takes one but I've yet to see that one walk in the door. I'd rather spend the time with my family, to be perfectly blunt, than in a stranger's house alone petting the cat.

Jeff - It's amazing how caravans died when the market was hot and grew exponentially when things cooled down a bit. I'm getting a couple of invites a week.

Kathy - Tours are a GREAT method of learning the inventory. But once you know the inventory ... it doesn't take a lot of trips into Sierra Verde at Arrowhead, for example, to learn than most of the family rooms can double as racquetball courts because of their size. Or, for that matter, to learn that KB opens the wall separating the great room and the hallway halfway down to make its smaller models feel larger. Once, twice and you know it. Or at least you ought to.

Silvia - Yes and no. We've done the surveys. One agent in my office faxed the forms to her seller and was ripped for the next 45 minutes on the phone because the agents thought the master bedroom was small. If you can't convince them of the reality, there's a decent chance no one will be able to do it.

MAY

2007

I'm not too keen on broker's opens as well...as here it seems it's just agents who are coordinating wanting to catch a mement of "fame"... As for Open Houses....I highly support Open Houses mainly because they are hot as Sunday events in Hawaii. Oahu is such a small island but in each community and/or neighborhood the likelihood of being able to view MANY properties within the 3 hours are huge...try, 40 at the least in Mililani alone for single family and townhomes. I am currently in contract as of Monday resulting from client's who's agent could not come with them. So I beg to differ on Open Houses as it would depend on the market for them in each area.

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