For the last several days I have been showing in a very popular area and I have been amazed at how hard the seller’s have made it for me to show their home. I am working with out of town buyers so we have been looking at a lot of homes. For the most part I have been making my showings with almost a 24 hour notice. Several of the sellers changed my showing time which then throws my sequence off. I have been tripping over myself back tracking through areas that I have already left.
They have also been changing my 2 hour showing window to a 1 hour showing window. When you are showing 10 to 15 homes it is so hard to try and work a showing schedule around this tight of a window. Several times I have had to call and extend my showing time. Typically I’m good at judging my time but I’m finding this one hour window very difficult to deal with.
Yesterday afternoon I scheduled appointments for this morning. I was trying to show between 9:00 and 11:00. For one of the homes I was called back by the showing service and told that my showing was declined as they were only accepting showings after 12:00 PM. I went ahead and scheduled for noon but then had to cancel because we were finished with the homes we were looking at long before that 12:00 time. I just now called again to schedule for this evening when we are showing both Mr. and Mrs. Buyer. For this particular home there was also a two hour notice that was required so I again barely fit it in the time slot. This time it was at least accepted.
I guess the most incredible showing that I have run across lately was a seller that was only allowing showings on Sunday between 1:00 and 4:00. The particular Sunday that I tried to show their home they decided not to show it that day. My feeling is they are obviously not motivated and with so many homes on the market: next!
Now I do understand when I call at the last moment and a showing is declined. Invariably as we are driving around my clients will see a sign in the yard and want to see a home. When that happens I don’t’ have a problem with rescheduling at a later time. In that case I’m the one being a bit inconsiderate but I always feel like it is worth a try to show the home.
I realize that it is a pain to have a home on the market. I moved many times with children and I remember having to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. My solution to this is for the seller to wait until we arrive to leave. I don’t have a problem with a seller leaving through the back door as we are arriving at the front door. I do have a problem with the home not being accessible to show (especially since for the most part I have been giving a 24 hour notice).
I would like to make one last note. The seller does need to leave. It is very uncomfortable to look at someone’s home with the seller looking on. I have also found that they usually open their mouth and insert their foot.
Please Mr. Seller make your home available to show.
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Mr. and Mrs. Seller if you are going to all the work to list your house with a REALTOR it is extremely important that you go to the extra work of accepting showings when they are called in. I recently had out of town buyers in for one day only. They gave me a list of 10 homes that they wanted to see. I made my appointments through a showing service with a four hour notice to the seller’s. These were being shown on a Monday in the afternoon. Out of the 10 homes I tried to schedule four sellers declined our showing. Out of the four sellers that declined one of them gave me a legitimate reason; they were taking their house off of the market. I can understand that things change and better they cancel than my clients fall in love with a house that is no longer on the market. Since these were out of town buyers I decided to call the rest of the agents directly to see if they could talk their clients in to letting me show the homes. 
think the agent must have had a heart to heart talk with their seller. This was a new listing and the agent quickly called me back and said yes her clients would be happy for us to see the home. The photographer was still there when we arrived but it was no big deal it was easy for us to stay out of his way.
showing service that the appointment has been declined by the seller. Even though our Northwest Houston market has not been affected by the economy as much as many other areas of the United States, we still have a lot of houses on the market and not as many buyers are able to get financing as in previous years. 
When you are putting your house up for sale there are certain things you can’t change. You are going to have to live with your location, the size of your yard, your floor plan, what other homes in your neighborhood are selling for. There are however certain things that you can do to stage your home to get top dollar. 
of old and new homes; parts of the neighborhood being a little more run down.. The second home was in a newer neighborhood. When I ran comparatives I found that this floor plan typically sold for about $10,00 more in the newer neighborhood. 
should have sold for more than the home in the older neighborhood. In this case what ended up happening was the home in the older neighborhood sold for more than the home in the newer neighborhood.
