Really Real Estate....................... Blog

Surprise, Surprise

I’m showing a Vacant House. I have a family with me. A wife and husband, a couple of kids. The kids are running through the empty bedrooms. The wife is chasing after them. Suddenly, the wife comes running up to me clutching her kids in her arms.

“We have to leave”

“What’s the matter,” I ask

“We have to leave the house now”

"What’s wrong?”

“There’s a skunk in the closet”

“A skunk, are you sure it’s not a cat or something”

“It’s a skunk and it hissed at me and I’m out of here”

And so was I

I shut the bedroom door, locking the skunk in the room and call the listing agent.

“Hi, this is Barry Malawer from Century 21 Mulvey, I’m showing your house”

“Great, do you have an offer for me?”

“Well, no not exactly, there’s a skunk in the master closet”

“Haha, your kidding me”

“No, really, there’s a skunk in the closet”

“Are you sure it’s not a cat”

“Yes, I suggest you call animal control”

“Well, there is no animal control there”

“You need to have someone get rid of the skunk”

“Can’t you shoo it out of the house?”

“You’re kidding me, you want me to do it. I’m just calling you out of professional courtsey to let you know you have a skunk in the house. Right now he’s trapped in the bedroom, do you want me to leave the door open?”

“So do you think you’re clients might be interested in buying the house?”

“Not with the skunk in it?”

“Well, I guess I'll have to take care of it”

“Yes, I would imagine so, Good Luck”

I bet you the skunk is still sitting in the house.

Surprise

My usual routine when showing a house: I ring the doorbell; wait a few seconds, then I knock loudly on the door in case the doorbell was not working; take the key, open the door, poke my head in calling out loudly, “Hello…Hello, Barry Malawer from Century 21 Mulvey, Hello…” Then I walk in and proceed to show the house. So two weekends ago I do just that. I’m now showing the house to my clients and get to the Master Bedroom, open the door and this guy is lying buck naked on the bed snoring so loudly it hurts my ears. It sounds like a chain saw. And this is what is going through my mind: If I wake him now, he will be so startled by the fact that strange people are standing in his bedroom that he could take out a gun and shoot us, maybe he'll just charge at us, rampaging about being in his house, or just yell at us and I would now have to explain to him that I am a Real Estate agent and made an appointment to show his house, blah, blah, blah. Or, I could shut the door and continue to show the rest of the house, quietly, hoping he doesn’t wake up. Or, we could just leave the house and see it again another time. Or, we could quietly leave the house and never come back. Just then, the phone rings. We stop dead in our tracks, hold our breath and wai. He stops snoring then, rolls over and --------- continues to snore. We decided to tip toe out of the room, close the door and save the house for another day.   

Tag Sale

I was showing a home where the Homeowner insisted that he be present for all showings. There was no lock box, so I had to wait in the driveway for him to come home and show the house. Great. We walk in through the garage (not the ideal way to show a house) and before we get into the house itself, he starts selling us everything in the garage. He is having his own mini tag sale with my clients. “This snow blower cost me $500 hundred dollars, you can have it for $300.” This went on and on with every single item in the garage and the garage was packed. I mean PACKED. It took us a half an hour just to get to the kitchen door. Once inside the house, he repeated the tag sale for every room. I had four more houses to show these clients. Finally, my clients bought a $3 tray and got out of there. It was a nice house and something I have clients for but since I can’t show the house without him being there...I will not be able to sell his house. I cannot go through that again. If it was nicer stuff, maybe---

Feedback

Seller’s are very concerned with Feedback. With some sellers I get the call while the Showing Agents are still showing the house. “They’re in the house and just about to leave, can you call them for feedback before they get in the car?” While I fully appreciate the need for an immediate response, the feedback that’s going to be most beneficial is the feedback I can get from the Agent at the end of the day or the next business day, after the Buyer has seen all the houses he needs to see with the Agent and the Agent can assess what the Buyer is really looking for. 

Most of the time the feedback response is, “That house was not really for my buyer.” While I can appreciate that response, my Seller usually has a hard time with it. (And I am so guilty of using that one.) It doesn’t give them enough information as to whether their house will ever sell. Of course it doesn’t give the Seller anything to go on because that response and “It was a nice house but the Buyer is still looking” are standard responses from agents who usually can’t remember what house your are referring to or did not bother to interview the buyer as to their actual impressions of the house or they’re just being polite about the whole thing. Either way it is of no help.

The majority of feedback is usually about stuff the Seller can’t change anyway: “They didn’t like the busy road” or “The Master Bedroom was too small” or “The Sun didn’t set in the right window” (I’ve gotten that one more than once). This feedback is useless information to the Seller because it is something they are usually aware of and can’t change and have priced the house accordingly. What you are really waiting for is for someone to say “The house had a bad odor or smelled of smoke” or “The house was too cluttered to give a good impression” or “They should have made their bed.” These are things I’ve been trying to find a polite way to tell my Seller with out insulting them or have told them about the house but they just didn’t hear me. This is the feedback that helps us sell a house.