Anxious sellers in today's market
I spent the past few days showing homes and noticed some sellers are getting especially anxious to sell their homes. Of course, with a lot of inventory available, there is a lot of competition to sell your home in today's Charleston real estate market. Here's a few examples of seller anxiety that I noticed.
We made an appointment to see a home and I accidentally wrote the wrong time down so we showed up about 45 minutes earlier than we were supposed to. Protocol is to ring the bell to make sure the homeowner isn't there and then use the lockbox. But in this case, because we were accidentally a little early, the seller answered the door. With a child taking a nap and the home not quite ready to show, we were asked to come back later but in fact we couldn't because our day was tightly scheduled.
I apologized and explained that we really couldn't come back but here is where it got interesting. The seller asked if my clients didn't like their home because we could not come back later. Of course not, we hadn't even seen the home yet so there was no way to know whether they did or didn't like it but it seemed like a little bit of seller paranoia creeping in.
Was is something to do with the house? No, there was nothing wrong with the home.
In another case, we asked for an appointment during a time range that we would be in that neighborhood. We were advised that it would be OK to see the home but not until later in the day. Now as I pointed out before, we were on a tight schedule and it would have been not only impossible but impractical to go back to see the house later.
And interestingly, when I got home at the end of the day, I had an email from the listing agent asking whether my clients didn't like the home because we didn't want to view it. Of course not, it had to do with the home not being available to be seen when we wanted to see it.
Was is something to do with the house? No, there was nothing wrong with the home.
And finally, there was a very nice home that we saw. When you show homes to buyers, you are always asked to provide feedback and I indicated that it was a very nice home and pointed out several of the real positives about the home on the feedback request. This morning an email from the agent asking what is my clients interest and position regarding the home.
A bit of desperation (and somewhat pushy), don't you think.
No, there was nothing wrong with the home.
While my clients liked the home, they probably are going to select another. There are simply too many nice homes available to select from.
And on a humorous note, we took a second look at one home in particular that was not only for sale but the furniture was available for sale as well. The seller asked the listing agent whether my buyers liked the furniture with no concern whatsoever whether they may or may not have liked the house.
That's cool. No anxiety with that seller. And it was a very nice home.
Photo courtesy of Flickr by Arnaud Abelard