With spring ahead my buyer business is picking up. Once again, I get phone calls from my buyers to cancel appointments that were made to go look at houses , and get the phone calls that we can go look at houses in a couple hours, as the buyer has for some reason or other extra time.
I have a three hour window. I call 10 listings and get through to three agents on the spot; leave 7 messages. Two of the messages are returned within the hour, two of them call me while I am already showing the houses. Three of them never returned the call.
If it is a vacant house, I have no problem showing the house, but if the agent has specified to call before you go, I make sure to make contact before I show the listing.
Where I am going with this, is that if we have been lucky enough to get the listing, we need to be willing and able to answer our phone during regular hours. For us real estate agents that includes weekends when most buyers are able to look at houses.
Recently, an agent from my office told me of an agent that had left a message for the listing agent of an occupied home and within the hour shown up at the door and tried to open the door. The owner of the home was there, and as you can imagine he felt his privacy had been violated. Whose fault did he think it was? The listing agent. Shame on the buyer's agent.
Another situation that bothers me to no end, is the listing agent that has so many REO's and other listings, that her/his phone is always busy. Phone calls are returned within 24 hours when I have been able to leave a message, and although these houses are vacant, the agent uses contractor lock boxes that make it impossible to show her listings. I wish the banks new how hard it is to show her listings, as unless the buyer request to see this listing, I no longer attempt to show them anymore.
So a couple of request and reminders to all of us.
•- Answer the phone
•- Return phone calls in a timely manner
•- Don't take more listings than your office can handle
•- Train your sellers to be able to leave the house with an hour's notice. ( I have gotten two contracts in that situation)
•- Tell your sellers to leave the house while it is shown.
•- Read the listing completely for showing instructions
•- If you have made an appointment to show a home and are unable to make it, have the courtesy to cancel the appointment. Sellers have gone to a lot of trouble to make the house presentable, and make arrangements to be elsewhere.
And last but not least, while you are under contract be available to the other agent and mortgage lender. Now that we have access to telephone, email, and texting there is no excuse to be unavailable for days at a time, once the house is in the process of being sold.
I may take a lot of heat for this post, but I am embarrassed by the lack of courtesy from some people in our profession. It makes us all real estate agents look bad.
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