Selling? How Minutes Mean Money

Don’t let agents shut your home for 10,065 minutes!

by Neil Jenman

Jenman – Real estate support you can trust

Years ago, when agents first started doing ‘open-for-inspections’ many would spend several hours at a home. But then agents began to reduce the time at ‘open-inspections’ to about one hour.

It’s well-known in real estate circles that ‘open-inspections’ are not so much designed to sell homes but to find new leads for the agents and persuade sellers to lower their prices. Once sellers are convinced that their home has been “exposed to the market”, agents push them to reduce the price.

Most sellers want too much for their homes. Accordingly, they need to be “conditioned down” in price by their agents. ‘Open-for-inspections’, along with a ‘marketing campaign’ and a stream of bad news about the “market” all help to convince sellers to lower their “price expectations”.

But if agents followed some basic selling rules, home-sellers would not have to reduce their prices as much as most agents pressure them to do so.

One basic ‘selling rule’ is: Make it easy for customers to buy.

Why do agents make buying a home so hard and inconvenient for buyers? Basically, two reasons:

First, most agents are inherently lazy. Second, the inexperience of most sellers plays into the hands of lazy agents who convince them of absurdities such as opening a home for just one hour a week.

In the past few years, agents have moved from one-hour ‘Open-for-Inspections’ to half-hour. And now, wait for it, some agents are now doing ‘Open-for-Inspections’ for 15 minutes!

If agents wanted to give great service and get a great price for their sellers, they would not close their sellers’ homes 99.85 per cent of the week! With agents opening homes for just 15 minutes, it means sellers’ homes are shut for 10,065 minutes each week. It’s monetary madness.

The best day of the week to sell real estate is Sunday. That’s when most buyers are available. Incredibly, most agents close on Sunday. That’s like closing a restaurant on a Saturday night!

“Selling” a home, as with selling any item, starts with a simple rule: Make it easy for buyers to inspect the product being sold, the homes! Buyers are available on Sunday, the best-selling day of the week.

Lazy agents, who don’t work Sundays have well-rehearsed lines to justify their ineptitude. Such as: “If buyers are really keen, they will inspect homes at our inspection times.” Rubbish. Time after time, buyers give the same answer when asked why they bought from an agent who was open on Sunday: “Because you were the only agent open!” Smart, hard-working agents work a full day on Sunday, starting at 9 AM. They show homes while most agents are still in bed.

How much lower can the real estate industry go in poor service?

How about 60-second inspections? Yes, that will be enough. In one minute, buyers can see the home and then agents can do what they always do, go to the sellers and give them bogus feedback to get them to lower their prices so that the agents can make a sale at any price. And then take Sunday off.

Home-sellers: Here’s a simple way to give yourself a much better chance of getting a much higher price for your home. Select an agent who’s willing to show your home to buyers at any time that suits the buyers. Select an agent who’s open all day on Sunday which means you’ll knock-out your competition because buyers can’t see other homes with those lazy agents who are shut.

On that one day of the week, Sunday, you can corner the market and get all the available buyers in your area coming to your home.

It’s so simple and it makes such common sense that it must make you wonder why all agents don’t open on Sunday. Well don’t wonder, just find an agent who will do the best for you. Good, hard-working agents do exist. Sure, they are often hard to find. But, gee, they are worth it.

Find the best and hardest working agent in your area to sell your home. It could easily be worth thousands of dollars extra for you.

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