Denying home showings can cost you dearly. It can cost you obtaining the highest selling price for your home or even worse… it can prevent the sale of your home.
Every listing I take, I have a discussion with the home owner how important it is to allow as many showings as possible to occur. Of course they always are on board and say no problem. Well I recently had such a homeowner. I won’t go into personal details but he needed to get his house sold, sooner rather than later. He assured me all showings would occur, he had to get the home sold.
So several weeks into the listing and 19 showings and no offers. But as I am reviewing the listing activity report, I noticed there have been 22 showings denied. Now some of them rescheduled and became part of the 19 showings. But over half never rescheduled and tried to come back.
So what happens to the others that never come back. Well there are three things that can happen.
1) Denying home showings can send a message to home buyers
The first thing that can happen is you are possibly sending the message that your not all that interested in selling your home. Buyer’s do not want to get emotionally involved in a house they can’t have. Trust me, most home buyers need to get emotionally involved in a house for them to purchase it.
I can’t tell you how many times, when I have been working with buyers and we have difficulty getting into a home for sale, the home buyer says “they must not really want to sell their home”. Subsequently, they move on to new inventory coming on the market.
2) Denying home showings can deter real estate agents
It is not unusual for agents to have several potential buyers for your home. But if it is difficult to get showings of your home and there is other inventory, they not going to go crazy trying to show your home.
Make it as easy as possible. And don’t make the mistake in thinking your house has no competition.
3) Denying showing makes buyer lose interest
Buyers get excited with each new listing that comes along….. this could be the one! They have lost interest in the home. It is not safe to assume as a seller if you can’t accommodate a showing that they are automatically going to try again. Buyers get excited when they see a home they might like. They get quite disappointed when they can’t see it. They move on to the next house that catches their attention or they have found a house and put it under agreement.
So what doses denying showings cost you? Denied showings can cost you the sale of your home or at the very least thousands of dollars. Excitement among buyers is high when your home is new to the market and quickly dies off. It is critical to sell your home in the first 30-45 days to maximize your net proceeds. As buyer interest dwindles so do potential offers.
Once you make the decision to sell your home. Make sure you give buyers as much access to your home as possible. Remember all it takes is one, denying one showing could cost you a sale.
