Now, having advertised and dealt with enquiries, we now need to deal with showing people through the house. This seems to be the thing that a lot of sellers don’t look forward to doing. A common excuse for avoiding this is for vendors to say, “I haven’t got the time to show lots of people through the house.” Before we go further, let me stress something. Unless you were having an ‘Open House’ viewing period, if you got one interested person, or couple, a day to view your property during the first week after it was advertised, and one every second day during the second and third weeks, you would be doing exceedingly well. After that, you would be doing well if you got one party per week coming round to view it.

To me it defies logic that people suggest that they can’t spare a few hours a week to show people through a house, yet they will sacrifice several months full time employment in order to get enough money after tax to pay a real estate salesperson to do the work for them. Please don’t disregard what I said earlier. Most New Zealanders would have to work full time for about six months to earn $15,000 after tax.

Even if you live in a very busy street, don't expect lots and lots of people to come round to inspect your house. It is not unusual for properties to be on the market for monthly periods when no buyers come through to view it. The very fact that relatively few people come to view houses for sale is one of the reasons why people trying to sell privately hand the sale of their property over to real estate agencies. They think agents might get greater numbers of people in, but they don’t.
If you listed your property with a large real estate company, you would be showing a lot of sales people through during the first week anyway, so you might just as well be using up your time and energy showing prospective buyers through yourself.

If you really have an aversion, or feel too self-conscious to show people through your property yourself, why not get someone else to do it for you? Any teenager could take care of that, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be one of your own. You could even offer to pay someone a few dollars for every group they took through. Just make sure that you have a leaflet with all the relevant details made up that can be given to interested parties, and get the person showing them through the house to take the names and telephone numbers of these interested parties, if you don’t already have them. That way you can ring the people later and find out if there was anything else they wanted to know about the property.

The person showing visitors through the house doesn’t have to have any sales skills. It is almost impossible to talk people into buying a house that doesn’t suit their requirements. In fact, if you try to persuade buyers to purchase a property, you are more likely to put them off. No matter how beautifully presented and how reasonably priced a house is, people won't buy it if it doesn’t suit their needs. Generally, prospective buyers have a good idea of what they are looking for in properties within their affordable price range. If your property meets their requirements, they will consider making an offer, if it doesn’t, they won't.

Something that is perhaps more important than the ability of the person taking people through the property, is the actual time of day that the buyers are taken through? Try to make an appointment for a time when it is likely to get a reasonable amount of sunshine and when it is liable to be fairly quiet. You could even restrict viewing times to certain hours, or days of the week. If people are seriously interested in your property, they will make the effort to come during those restricted times. The value in making appointments is that you won't have people coming through in the middle of meal times or before you have had a chance to make the place tidy. Arranging for restricted viewing times is a bit like holding an open house, but the visits would be restricted to people who have shown a genuine interest. You won't get people up the street coming in just because it happens to be an open house. If you anticipate several parties coming through during a specific period, you could arrange for some helpers to keep an eye on them as they go through the rooms.

It would also make sense to offer the visitors a cup of tea or coffee so that you can keep them in the house a bit longer and get to know them better. The friendlier you become with them, the less likely they are to try to beat you down if they put in an offer. Notice that I didn’t say they are not likely to try to beat you down. I said, ‘less likely’.

Open Homes
Better than having people make special appointments to view your property, you would be better off running ‘Open Home’ periods. These are becoming more and more popular with real estate companies because some people prefer to view homes casually. With open homes, you are likely to get people who are just being curious, but it is also true that if they like the property, they might tell others about it. If you open your house to the public, make sure that you get viewers to write down their names addresses and telephone numbers in a visitor’s book. You have a right to know who enters your house. If they refuse to do this, politely ask them to leave. This will provide some protection against the chances of robbery.

Real estate agents usually only run open homes for about ¾ of an hour. This is because they often have to attend to three or four open homes on the same day. However, since you are likely to be running only one open home, you might as well allow yourself two or three hours in order to allow more time for people who are looking at other ‘open homes’ to get to yours.