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Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appointm
https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=65964
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Author:  StubaJay1 [ Jul 12, 2013 4:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appointm

Hi everyone,
We have put our first home on the market, we are heading into our 3rd weekend now and have only had 1 couple through our home, problem is our agent does inspection by appointment only, no opens at all. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do? I would have thought the first few weekends would be the busiest? Not sure where to go from here and the agent is pushing for us to lower the price already. Happy to provide a link to the advert if requested :)

TIA
Jay :)

Author:  JB1 [ Jul 12, 2013 7:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

I think inspection by appointment is better.

The agent can go through the house with the buyer without having stickybeaks being there.

And if there is little interest, an open for inspection with no one else there will show a buyer there is no other interest.



Author:  StGeorgeBuild [ Jul 13, 2013 12:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

Why is the agent against open inspections?

From a buyers point of view, there are many houses open each weekend. They are the ones I will visit. I will not contact an agent and arrange an appointment when there are others out there that i don't need to go to that trouble.

Tell your agent you want 1 - 2 open inspections per week. We did this and had between 6 to 12 couples/families through on each weekend open and 2 - 4 groups through on weekday opens. House was sold in 3 weeks.

Also if you can post a link to the ad that would be good.

Author:  StubaJay1 [ Jul 13, 2013 1:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

That's just the way they work, all of their listings are like this unfortunately we weren't aware of this when we signed up, we figured opens were just the done thing..

Edit. Link removed

Author:  matt_will_fix_it [ Jul 13, 2013 7:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

Sorry if this post seems harsh, but you need to be firmer with your agent.

A listing with no inspection times to me indicates the place is probably under contract.

Why doesn't the agent do open inspections? Is it so they can have their weekend?

You are the customer. Do not let them dictate how it's done. If you want an open inspection on the weekend then tell them 1 week in advance. Get them to update the listing online. Insist that they attend the inspection.

If they fail to do this then they are not working in your best interest. Check your contact with them... Ours said the agent would work in our best interest to get the sale. If yours is similar then terminate the contact with them.

Do you also have a listing on realestate.com.au? If not again question your agent as we found that we got more interest from realestate.com.au than domain.com.au.

Also a few points on the listing
- It does not list the actual address. Is this at your request? Or the agents?
- I would put the actual address in. Then people can drive past and look at the place for themselves (we found a lot of extra people in our street looking at our house from outside once it was advertised online).
- There is no floorplan. How can people decide if its got enough rooms or space for them?
- Again on the floorplan, it says the garage is 1m bigger than normal. This should be able to be seen on the floorplan
- It doesn't list the total size of the block

Edit: I found the listing on realestate.com.au
Its only had 84 page views. Ask the agent why this is? Our place had about 800 within the first three weeks.
I think the answer will be:
- People skip over listings that don't have the address
- People skip over listings with no open inspection times

As the agent for a weekly "Campaign Report" from realestate.com.au. I will PM you our campaign report which shows the daily level of interest of our ad online.

Edit#2: How can people attend an open inspection if the address isn't listed. I think this is critical, list the actual street address.

Author:  travelbug [ Jul 13, 2013 10:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

Unfortunately you didn't ask before you signed. You signed a contract with them. It doesn't state they will do open homes so you can't make them. Open homes are more work. They need to have at least 2 people (depending on the size of the house) and sometimes they need to share their commission with the second person.
Tell them you want the address listed if you want. I too only look at those with no address if it REALLY stands out as something that might suit me. But I'm an investor buyer not a home buyer.
Yes the first month to six weeks is critical, after that a property gets stale. Hopefully things pick up.
Good luck.

Author:  matt_will_fix_it [ Jul 13, 2013 2:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

travelbug travelbug
Open homes are more work. They need to have at least 2 people (depending on the size of the house) and sometimes they need to share their commission with the second person.


I disagree. We had 1 agent only and did open homes.

Author:  travelbug [ Jul 13, 2013 3:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

At mine they had 2-3. I've been to hundreds of open homes. Most have 2.

Yes occasionally there was one agent in the cheaper areas, and after the first couple of weeks.

Author:  FionaT [ Jul 13, 2013 4:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

If your agent still won't do home opens after asking him to do so,hopefully you didn't sign to long a contract, change agents as soon as you can,stick to your guns about price,but also be realistic,look at other properties similar to yours on the market.

Author:  Di Nosaur [ Jul 13, 2013 11:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

Personally, I would never have a home open. I told my REA that it was to be appointment only and my house sold within weeks.

One thing that I noticed, was that the description of your property is very factual. Where is your AMAZING kitchen and FABULOUS energy saving solar panels etc? I basically wrote my own blurb so could talk up whatever I wanted.

Definitely have a chat to your REA and get some stuff changed. The listing is boring, your house is beautiful :)

Author:  StubaJay1 [ Jul 14, 2013 2:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Help! Selling house.. Agent will only open homes by appo

Thanks for the advice everyone. Will take it all on board and have a chat with the agent this week to see what we can do moving forward. Just don't want our property sitting on the market to go stale..

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