A strong internet presence can provide your prospect pipeline with opportunities, but not every opportunity is a good one.
Recently a potential seller reached out to us, and I set an appointment to meet.
When I checked our MLS for information, a somewhat strange history was revealed. Recently listed, price reduced first day on the market, under contract within a day, and then cancelled. Odd, to say the least, so I called the listing agent for some insight. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores, but the advice was "steer clear, the seller has some serious issues".
But inventory is low in our market and affordable homes still tend to move fast, and sometimes I just have to stick my finger in the electrical outlet to find out if it's live!
I had a blunt conversation with the seller about her quitting the previous agents and how could I know there wouldn't be a repeat?
Bottom line, I left the appointment with this was a strong possibility of a repeat performance, so if we happened to get the listing, fine, but it not, there wasn't going to be any sleep lost. I exchanged a couple of texts with the seller after our appointment, and then a bit quiet for about a week. Spider sense says check MLS and sure enough, freshly listed. And sure enough, another 9 days later, another listing cancelled. And while I'm curious as to exactly what happened with the next agent, ultimately just glad I didn't invest further time and dollars into chasing a Runaway Seller!
Today was more screening potential clients, all finding us from the internet.
Someone with interest in a Lebanon area patio home (seems legit, but they had contacted a Zillow agent to show them a home before contacting us!).
Another buyer looking for a West Chester condo for his mother (quick calibration about local pricing, texted some listings, let's see where this goes).
And another contact from our Wordpress site that feels like it's just this side of being a clear "WhatsApp" type buyer (when the contact form has the first and last names reversed from the contact sign off name, well connect the dots).
In each case, I can point to how they found us and why.
From there, it's up to me to screen them appropriately and decide who gets my time, and who doesn't.
Just watch out for those dodge balls!
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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