It's hard to make appointments!

48 hour notice should be plenty of time to set up an appointment to see a home. That said, what a surprise we got when my clients and I, who had driven 8 hours from South Jersey, arrived at the first showing of the day. A disgruntled owner answered the door clearly not prepared for us to see the home. Not to be misleading, I don't mind when the sellers are there. In fact I think sometimes a showing can benefit from them being there. They know the ins and outs of their home. Sure they accentuate the greatness "this is 40 year architectural shingles on this new roof!" Suppress the flood stains in the basement..."It has never flooded down here before, must have been the hard rain last night". But generally I have found that when they are there it really does not detract from the showing. Having keen and laid back buyers helps as well as buyers who can see through the BS and realize when the seller is actually being genuine.

The first clue that something was off was that there was no lock box on the door to which I had the combo for... Uh oh! The second was the huge, barking boxer in the window that wanted to jump through and eat my buyers children...Uh oh..again! We knock anyway and wake up the seller...no good! I think he may have been half way to the door anyway because we were driving a big F-350 diesel pick up and you could hear us coming up the driveway.

He was clearly pissed, and rightfully so! The listing agent who never returned my call, the agent on floor time when I called the second time, who told me the house was VACANT and gave me the lock box combo, clearly didn't follow up to make sure it was OK to see the house. Is it hard to make a few phone calls and confirm with the seller or listing agent that 12:45pm on a Saturday is OK for us to see the house? Now I am not saying I am entitled to go look at a house for whenever is convenient for me. What I want though is to be able to accommodate my buyers and trust that when I go to a home with adequate notice, in this case 48 hours, it will be ready to show and the seller will be prepared for us to be there. If I'm given the OK on the time, given a lock box combo then I assume we are all set! Nothing like pissing off a seller, and what's worse, when he was done ranting about us being there, he said that this had happened before!

Something tells me there will be a listing contract voided on Monday morning...any takers? Just be sure you give him notice the next time you want to show it!

-Josh Pratt