Real Estate Tips: Selling your home

Real Estate: Multiple showings can lead to useless feedback
The Tennessean• May 28, 2008

In these times of high inventory, sellers are getting more and more frustrated as the showings have increased, and that forces the owners to prepare the house for the intrusion of the alleged buyers. This process can take minutes or hours, with the variable tied proportionately to the number of children that reside in the dwelling. Child erosion is a valid term.
Having invested the time to ready the home for the inspection, the sellers are curious as to the evaluation of the would-be buyers.
In most showings, the buyers wander about the home spending particular time on the areas of the house that are priorities for them: Large closets, updated kitchen, two-car garage, nine-foot ceilings, or any of a number of eccentric, eclectic, idiosyncratic, seemingly whimsical wishes or demands. However, these ideas are not whims. Some buyers will not purchase a home for reasons that defy logic. But, it's their money and they can buy what they like.
Soon after the buyers leave, the sellers begin quizzing their listing agent for feedback. They think they want it, but they don't. The only positive feedback is an offer, and sometimes even that is not so wonderful.
Anything negative is an attack upon the taste, the cleanliness or the fiscal acumen of the seller. "My client felt they would have to paint the entire house." Or, "The kitchen would have to be updated." Perhaps, "The ceilings are only eight feet tall." "It's not worth what they paid for it."
The sellers respond, "Who's buying the house, Shaquille O'Neal?" "The paint is fine. Besides everyone wants to paint a house when they move in." Or, "The kitchen has worked fine for us the last 30 years." "Who do they think they are, Donald Trump?"
Another obstacle to feedback from agents is the time required to receive it. As so many new companies have relocated to the area lately, along with thousands of other newcomers, Realtors are showing more and more "out-of-towners." In many cases, the Internet has served as an impediment to these buyers, as they have done their home shopping online before learning the lay of the land in Nashville.
All Realtors have heard the complaint from buyers that "I had all of these homes picked to see, and my Realtor only showed me what he wanted me to see." Therefore, the first day, or half day if the buyers give in, the Realtors show the buyers all of the properties that they, the buyers, have chosen.
After the first several houses, they beat a hasty retreat back to the office to regroup and allow the homeowner Realtor to show the buyers the properties that they actually want to see. Usually, the first homes were in some area foreign to the buyers' agent.
So, that evening after 22 showings, the buyer's agent checks her e-mail and voice mail and finds 22 Realtors clamoring for feedback. Needless to say, the information provided will be virtually worthless.