Would You Rather Be Told Or Be Shown?

People have a lot of questions when they're buying or selling a home.

How much is my home worth?
How much mortgage do I qualify for?
How much should I offer for the home I want to buy?
And many others.

For the last 5 years I've tried to involve customers in how I determine the answers, rather than just doing the homework myself and telling them my professional opinion.

I've been doing this by using screen meetings. This is a meeting where you call me while you are at your pc and we talk on the phone while I let you see what I am doing on my pc screen. This is done auto-magically using something called the internet *wink. It takes about a minute to set up and is just like watching TV for you. You can see what I am typing on my screen and see me moving my mouse. You see everything I see the second I see it.

This allows me to take people inside the realtor-only multiple listing service (MLS) so they can see all the assumptions I have to make to answer their questions. One benefit is that the customer often points out things I would have missed. Another benefit is the customer realizes they have questions they really need me to answer before they can make a decision, questions which they never would have known to ask without seeing the information I see firsthand.

I'm often hired to sell a home after another real estate firm has been unsuccessful in marketing the home. I am amazed at the number of people who never saw how their home was represented in the MLS, and never knew about all the homes their home was competing with, and all the homes just like their home that had attracted a successful purchase while their home had been actively for sale. Twenty or thirty minutes with me in a screen meeting will save the customer months of a frustration trying to sell their home.

I like buyers to see the details of the real estate activity in the neighborhood they are thinking of buying a specific home in, the number of times that homes has been up for sale, the timing of any price changes while the home has been for sale, and the price the current owner paid when they bought the home. I also can show them if there are any registered sex offenders or EPA designated toxic waste sites nearby. It's easy to have an emotional response to a home, and you should have an emotional response to a home you want to buy, but having a screen meeting to really understand what is going on with the house and the neighborhood can avoid a lot of problems.

All of that said, I've also learned that some customers are afraid of what they will learn during a screen meeting. And I really struggle with that, because what a customer does with the information I share with them is 100% up to them. I am simply offering transparency and an open dialog.