Why Do I Leave a Card at the House When I See a Property

Okay, I give up. I have tried to block time to write page-length relevant articles & I haven't made it work. Today I exercised, did dishes, got my hair done, showed 1 property, helped 5 colleagues at Bray with some technical stuff, made phone calls, & wrote a CMA (comparative market analysis) on a property I'm going to do a listing presentation on tomorrow. So I'm beginning to understand that blocks of time that go to thoughts involving my career sometimes go for client work first.

So, rather than just wimping out, I've decided that I need to write paragraph-length relevant articles. Someone once asked me, after I had shown him at least 15 properties, why I left a business card at each house.

I have a business card. Most realtors have business cards. We give them to people; we include them in hand-written notes; we include them with presentations. When we show a property to a potential buyer, we leave a business card in a prominent place. Sometimes it's on the kitchen counter or the dining room table. We do this as a courtesy to let the seller & the seller's agent know that we stopped by. The seller doesn't have to wonder if we are running late & we are still coming. The seller also knows who is responsible if something is "different" when they come back. The seller's agent knows that, since we have shown the property, he or she can find out what the buyer thought.

Sometimes, when a house is vacant, there will be lots of business cards on the kitchen counter. Like a dozen. Then it is interesting for the buyer's agent to see who has shown the property. Or how many people have looked at the property. Although seller's agents try to pick up cards & check vacant properties weekly, that isn't always possible. So a dozen cards in a week may be a lot, but a dozen cards over 3 months is not a lot.

To summarize: I put out a business card when I show a property to a buyer to let the seller & seller's agent know that I really came into the house & showed the property, & when the seller comes back to the house, I'm done. I also put out a business card to let other realtors know that I have shown this property to a potential buyer. And I notice whose cards are there.

Thanks for reading this. Let me know if you have questions I can answer about real estate in Grand Junction or in general.

What Are Showings?

When a buyer wants to see a property, the buyer’s agent makes an appointment with the seller’s agent. This is done by calling the agent’s company or the agent himself or herself and asking for a “showing” appointment. When I first started at Bray Real Estate, I would hear “showing appointment” on the overhead system & I wondered what that meant. At Bray there are people who set showing appointments for Bray properties & they answer the phone for showings. They talk to the buyer’s agent & find out what time the buyer would like to see the property. They also let the buyer’s agent know if there are specific instructions about when & how to get into the house.

To back up a little bit, when I am working with a seller, someone who wants to sell their property, I gather lots of information from them. One item we need to discuss is how people will make an appointment to look at the property. After all, you have to see the property first to know if you like it enough to buy it. Will the owner need to be there to open the door for the buyer & then leave? Will there be a lockbox on the door with a door key inside? Will there be a combination lock, letters or numbers, on the door with a door key inside? Will there be a special set of keys, like HUD keys, needed to get inside? Once we’ve decided about how to enter the property, we need to think about how much notice should be given & when is a good time. Does the homeowner need time, such as 2-hours notice, to get pets out of the house? Does the homeowner need time to tidy up before someone comes in? If there are tenants in the house, they legally get 24 hours notice before someone can enter, but sometimes tenants will let showings be scheduled with less notice. Are there times that are “off-limits,” such as a day sleeper allowing showings only after 4:00 PM? Are there religious times that the family does not want to be away from the house, such as Sabbath dinners? How will the seller be contacted? Can a message be left on a cell phone? Does the showing desk have to actually talk with the seller & get an okay for the showing appointment to happen? All these considerations are worked out when the property goes on sale, so that showing desk people know how to make the best appointments.

Let’s say that I have a buyer who wants to look at houses with 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1500 square feet, 2-car garage, and a one-quarter acre yard. The house addresses could have come from a list that I sent to the buyer from which the buyer has now chosen several properties. The list could come from a sample of different types that I put together to give the buyer an idea of what’s available, such as 1-story or 2-story, stucco or brick, older or newer. The list could be all the houses available in a specific price range and/or neighborhood or school area.

For the first appointment, I call the agency’s main number & I get transferred to someone who looks at the showing information that the seller put down. This turns out to be a house with small children & they need some time to tidy up. They are in luck because I am scheduling this showing appointment for tomorrow at 10:00 am. Also this house has a lockbox that I can use my keypad on. The seller has time to clean up & think of somewhere fun to go with the children tomorrow morning while I show the house to a potential buyer. Maybe the children will go the Mesa County Public Library.

This buyer is taking time from work or other activities to see these houses. I want the time to be well-spent for the buyer, so we actually schedule several showings from 10:00 to Noon. I will probably schedule 3 from 10-11:00 am, 3 from 10:30-11:30 am, & 2 from 11:00-Noon. I will also schedule them in a continuous path from House A to House B to House C, etc., based on how they are on the map. With the time overlap, the buyer doesn’t have to wait to see any houses & can move right along. With only 1 hour time slots, it is less inconvenient for the seller to be gone from their property.

I email the buyer the house order & the map. When I meet the buyer the next morning at 10:00 am at the first house on the list, I give him or her a clipboard with a photo & short description of the property from the Navica system & a pen to write down their impressions. This is for their use, not mine, because things can get forgotten. Then as we see each house, it goes on one of 3 lists: “yes,” “maybe,” or “no.” The buyer is only deciding whether or not to see the house again, not whether or not to buy. Sometimes as we go along, a “yes” becomes a “maybe,” a “maybe” becomes a “no.” After the buyer is done seeing the houses & has time to make decisions, the buyer sends me a shorter list for houses that deserve a second showing & a longer time spent at the property.

Sometimes there is no shorter list & the buyer chooses to have a new list in a different area. Sometimes new properties become available because they are new to the market or there has been a price drop. Sometimes previously viewed houses are combined with unseen houses on a list. Each time there is a house to be seen, a showing appointment is made. Then the buyer chooses houses for a very small list, maybe only 1 or 2, for a third showing. Eventually after enough showings, the buyer chooses the property he or she wants to buy.

Some Definitions of Listing Details

When I send my buyers a list of properties from the Navica MLS system, they see lots of information about the property. If it is about a house, here is some of the information that will be shown:

# BEDROOMS: How many bedrooms total are in the house. Bedrooms must have a closet, an escapable window, & a proper ingress & egress (a way in and a way out). Bedrooms must also be shown to be conforming or non-conforming in the “room size” area. Besides missing a closet or not meeting building codes for ingress/egress, non-conforming bedrooms are those in which someone could not escape from in case of a fire. They usually have no windows, windows that are too small, or windows that are too high up the wall for children to escape from.

# BATHROOMS: How many bathrooms total in the house. Each plumbing fixture counts as a ¼ in a bathroom. If it has a sink and toilet, it is a “half-bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, and shower, it is a “three-quarters bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, shower, & bathtub, it is a “full-bath.” If a bathroom is a full bathroom and has 2 sinks, it is actually called a “5-piece bathroom suite” instead of 1 ¼ bathroom.

GARAGE TYPE and GARAGE CAPACITY: A garage can be attached, detached, a basement garage, carport, parking spaces, or none. The capacity is based on how many vehicles can be parked in that garage. Sometimes people fill in garage dimensions if a garage is extra deep or extra tall for oversized vehicles.

YEAR BUILT and/or YEAR REMODELED: “Year Built” should be the date of the original building permit. If the house was remodeled, there should be appropriate building permits for that. A house can be updated without being remodeled if minor changes are made, such as new paint, appliances, flooring, etc.

AREA and/or SUBDIVISION: A house has a mailing address and/or street address which may tell you something about its location. When I search for property for someone, I don’t search for a specific address because it would take too long to check if every property was listed for sale. However, I can search by area in the MLS system or I can be more specific and search within a certain subdivision. Usually there are boundaries to the specific areas and you can find them at the Grand Junction Area Realtors Association map.

ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE, or HIGH School: If a buyer has children in the District 51 school system, they may want their children to stay in the same school as their current one. I can search by a specific school. They may also request a search within several elementary schools that are near to each other or a specific school that they feel is a better match for their children. You can find out which school your child will attend by going to the School District 51 schoolboundary website.

FRONTS: The front side of the house faces this direction. It can north, south, east, or west, or diagonal. Some people have preferences for houses to face south so the snow will melt off the driveway. Some people want the house to face west so they have a shady backyard in the evenings.PARCEL #: The parcel number mentioned at the Mesa County Assessor’s Office.

SELLER NAME: This must be the seller’s actual last name, not just the owner, so the person/s who legally own/s the property. Sometimes it just says "Owner" so the seller has some privacy.

SELLER LICENSED: If the seller is a real estate broker, he or she may have an unfair advantage when selling the property, so they must disclose to the potential buyer that they have a license to work in real estate.

TERMS: How the property can be purchased, such as with cash, a conventional loan, or an FHA or VA loan. Some properties that have been foreclosed are in such bad shape that they can only be purchased with cash. Also sometimes an owner will provide the financing to make it easier to buy the house, so it will say “owner carry.”

EM DEP and EM HOLDER: How much is required by the seller to show that a buyer is serious about purchasing the property. It is usually around 1 percent. The earnest money holder is the person who holds the deposit between making the office to buy and the closing. At the closing, the buyer’s earnest money counts towards the amount the buyer brings to the closing table.

TITLE CO: The title company is the one who is going to issue the title insurance on the property when it is transferred to the new owner. The seller pays for the insurance so that a “good title” can be given to the new buyer.

That's it for now. Let me know if you have questions about other things you have found on a listing or advertisement for a home.