Brandon Nelson
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What’s Your Ritual?
Having spent the weekend showing houses, I had the pleasure of experiencing some truly classic seller rituals, in how they left their homes before we arrived.
So you understand what my clients and I were looking at, we were in Lynden, looking at both century-old restored homes and super-sized, extremely well-kept 70’s homes, priced between $400K and $500K. When I say these 70’s homes were well kept, I mean to tell you they look like they were built yesterday. Truly impeccable.
In one home, the entire inside AND outdoor spaces were wired with recessed speakers, and the seller had put on — and cranked up — some classical CD that was the sound-track to our entire visit.
Even as we put on our shoes on the front porch the music rolled on and crescendo’d as if an orchestra watched our every move and played to it.
In another house – perhaps the most magnificently restored 100-year-old Queen Anne I’ve ever been in — the sellers had baked fresh peanut-butter/chocolate chip cookies, and left them out with a note to help ourselves. We were LOVIN’ IT!!! We pounded cookies and tried to keep them in our mouths as we gaped, amazed, at perfect room after room and exquisite antique after antique. Fabulous experience, all around.
Compare either of these experiences to a showing from last week, where we found every interior door throughout the entire house closed upon our arrival. It made it downright eerie, knocking on each and calling out “Hello!” and expecting again and again to have the owner leap out at us, not knowing we were even there. Such a trivial thing, but it makes such a huge difference to the buyer and buyer’s agent experience.
Some sellers put out fresh cut flowers, kick on all the lights, put on soft music or turn on a water feature. Do these tricks — above and beyond having the place spotless clean and picked up — do they actually work? I believe they very well can. My clients, for example, decided to write an offer on the music house. Aside from the tunes, the place was spotless and warm, the doors were open, the sellers were nowhere to be found so we could take our time and enjoy the visit.
Remember, the overwhelming emotion you want prospective buyers to feel as they walk through your home is, “I want to live this way!”
Plan your pre-showing rituals accordingly.
Years back, when I was looking for my first home, we visited a house with a similar ritual to the cookies experience you mention. The owner had baked a berry pie and left it on the dining table.
Unfortunately the teenagers in the house weren’t on board with things, since they had grabbed a fork and eaten half of the pie (right out of the pie pan) and left the fork in the pie pan. The agent got a giggle out of it. I was scared away not by the half-eaten pie, but by the water stains on the sheetrock coming down from the ceiling on the west walls of the house and the inch-long black ants I saw.
At least the asking price was a deal!