How to Get Your Short Sale Home Shown

How to Get Your Short Sale Home Shown

Copyright (c) 2009 Deanna & Jim's GOLD Team, RE/MAX Olympic

Homeowners unable to keep up their mortgage payments and ineligible for a loan modification frequently make the intelligent choice to sell their home as a short sale.  This article explains how to maximize the showings and the offers for your short sale listed home.

You need to think like a buyer's agent.  There are many homes on the market and maybe not enough time to show them all.  The easiest to show are - of course - the vacant bank-owned ones. Banks respond to offers swiftly too, not like those doggone short sales where you may wait 45-60 days for an answer while your buyers are getting nervous.  Vacant houses show larger, too.  

There are also resales, which are usually occupied, and will require coordinating with the owner to gain access. At least resale sellers respond to offers quickly, unlike short sales.

Short sales are almost always occupied and offers are answered notoriously slowly.  Hence you can see why the buyer's agent may not put them on the top of their list.

The properties that do get shown are the easiest to get into. In decreasing order of preference to a buyers agent they are:

1. Vacant/just go with  lockbox, all days, all hours.

2. Call 1st Owner with  lockbox, all days, 8-8.

3. Call 1st Owner with lockbox, limited times

4. Call 1st Tenant (tenant has negative interest in the house selling!), lockbox

5. Call 1st Pet (will absolutely have to talk to someone to do this one), lockbox

6. Appointment only, no lockbox

7, 24 Hour Notice, appointment only, no lockbox

Buyers agents frequently have limited face time with their clients. And the buyers want to see everything they can during that episode of driving around.  Required notice periods, appointment only, pet issues, and/or lack of a lockbox will simply prevent many agents from showing your home during their limited opportunities.

Of particular interest are the instantaneous opportunities created when while in the neighborhood to see another home the buyers see your home's sign. "Oh, can we see that one?" they ask the agent. The agent is obliged to check the showing instructions in the listing before ringing the bell. Obviously, if the showing instructions say appointment only, call-1st tenant, pet, 24-hour notice, or there is no lockbox present the odds are the house will not get shown then.

Living in a fishbowl with strangers showing up at any moment to see your house is no fun.  On the other hand when your listing is a short sale, and you are living in the house (hence causing it to inevitably show smaller and more cluttered than a vacant home) wondering if it will sell before foreclosure completes you would be smarter to have a lockbox on the door and "call 1st owner, if no answer just go" in the showing instructions.

Having an experienced short sale listing agent is the best way to maximize your chances of getting your short sale house sold before foreclosure completes.  Deanna & Jim's GOLD Team has multiple short sale listings under contract, sold, pending, and listed. We work with both buyers and sellers and have successfully completed over 350 transactions in the last 8 years.