I was showing listings last night for another agent who was unavailable. She set up all the appointments so all I had to do was drive the clients around to five homes. She's a friend and now she owes me a favor as well :)
The market here in Anne Arundel County Maryland can best be characterized as "saturated." The current home inventory is about three times higher than it was just 2 - 3 years ago during the height of the sellers market. In this type of market a listing agent should never miss an opportunity to allow a house to be shown, ever. There is no excuse in my book.
At the third house I searched for the lockbox...in vain. After several minutes I called the listing agent's cell phone and she seemed annoyed because she was out of state on vacation. The lockbox was supposed to be by the electric service panel and it wasn't. I was standing in front of the electric service panel and there definitely was no lockbox.
The listing agent said "I thought that would happen". Huh! You thought what would happen. This property has been on the market for two months. What happened to the lockbox? I'm sure there's a story behind it but quite frankly I was only interested in showing the house. She told me to call the owner and have him let us in the property. As it turned out the owner wasn't available and since there was no way to legally get into the property the buyers decided to do the best thing...next. There certainly isn't any shortage of homes to show.
This one didn't get shown last night and the buyers won't be going back any time soon, if ever. A missed opportunity, you bet. I'm not naive to believe that this was the house that the buyers were going to purchase. We'll never know though, will we?
Rich Iarossi is a full time licensed REALTOR®, working in Crofton, MD. My coverage areas are: Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, Howard, Calvert, Queen Anne, and Baltimore City and County. I specialize in residential real estate, working with both buyers and sellers. Use the registration free search on my website at www.RichSellsHomes.com. If you’re not already working with a REALTOR®...I can help. Call me at 443-995-9595 (Cell) or 410-451-6255 (Office).
SKYPE ME: RichSellsHomes
If you make yourself or personal assistants available or have nice team work (like you have offered your colleague), you don't need lock-boxes and you will hold 17.6% of pending sales in your market as I do.........
who knows your properties better than the person that listed it and their trained staff - I don't depend on lock-boxes - I depend on myself and my staff -we want to show our own listings because we are more knowledgeable about the listing and feel we stand a better chance of making the sale and the other Realtor appreciates not having to show up and finding a lock-box where the last Realtor there took the key, locked it in the house, electronic card doesn't work.....etc.
I am at an advantage in that we don't have traffic issues like so many other areas where lock-boxes are more necessary........it is worth it to pay a show fee to a Realtor on your own team (who is physically closer or has the available time) who can be present and give an accounting of how the buyer found out about the home, what they liked and disliked about the home and always, always, always before they leave ask if this is one of the homes that they will consider buying or not. If they say no, ask why......
Thanks for writing this post......