Personal Financial Advice from a former Certified Financial Planner
It’s Monday and no showings. That is to be expected. Most [tag]realtors[/tag] end up working both Saturday and Sunday so they take Monday off which isn’t a very popular day with clients for showings.
Let’s talk about the [tag]sign[/tag] in your yard.
Sunday and two showings. Not too shabby. Overall, 7 showings for our first weekend on the market. We’ll take it. So far, no one seems shocked at the price which is good. We had to set our price in a bit of a vaccum since no one has sold a house in our neighborhood in a while. Otherwise, everything is pretty normal.
Saturday and we’ve ended up with 5 showings. Not bad for a first weekend on the market considering how things are going in [tag]real estate[/tag] right now and the fact that it is still early April. Actually we weren’t really looking at selling in April but it was important for us to get out there first to help set the price in our market. Here is how to handle showings when you are [tag]selling your own home[/tag].
Well, we’re officially on MLS. Whoo-hoo! Frankly, it’s been a bit of kluge, but I guess in the end it all works out. Our very first day we get a call from a realtor to setup a showing. My wife spoke with her and after setting a time for the showing my wife inquired as to whether or not she was a realtor. Generally you don’t stay at your house for showings. It helps the potential buyers see your home as their home if they don’t see the people that currently live there. Also, it keeps you from answering awkward questions. And, if you are very lucky, they may want to spend a lot of time going back and forth and talking about your house if they are very interested in it. However, we aren’t going to leave strangers alone in our house without a realtor. (The realtor is semi-liable and probably wouldn’t allow anything shifty. It isn’t worth the trouble for them.)
Hello scammers. Well, our house isn’t even on MLS yet, and already the scam punks are coming out of the woodwork. So far, I’ve gotten two emails from two different people who actually already own homes in my city but they live in another city and the market there is bad, so they are wondering if we could work something out. Yeah. You can make an offer, get a mortgage and buy my house. If you meant something else then no. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this scam revolves around me getting all excited that someone is interested in my house only to get somewhere down the road where they have some "situation" that requires me to send them $10,000 to help clear up, but not to worry because they’ll give me my asking price plus $10K. Of course, there is no situation, no offer, and my ten-grand disappears. I also got someone who called and was headed down the road of asking me for some information like my bank account or Social Security before I noticed where she was going and got very cold. Then all of the sudden she "had something to take care of" and she …
We got our first showing today. It was someone who lives on our block as a renter and walked by the sign. The wife came without her husband because he has a travel job and won’t be back until next week. Seemed like she really liked it. The nice part is that as someone who already lives here we don’t have to explain anything about the neighborhood or why our house is worth more than one about 8 blocks away where the school boundaries change. How cool would that be if we just sold it right away from someone seeing the sign?