Appointments & Showings
In order to sell your home, people are going to have to see it, which means keeping your home clean, and often leaving on short notice. Your Realtor® will try to keep the inconvenience to a minimum, but the more people that can see your home, the better chance you have of selling. So just how do these showings occur?
First off, if you’re working with a Realtor you have the option of having a keysafe box on your home. This allows Realtors - only Realtors who are members of the Realtor’s Association of Edmonton - to have access to your home, according to the instructions you and your Realtor establish. The keysafe boxes are virtually indestructable offer a number of additional features:
- If there are certain times you don’t want your property shown, your Realtor can program the box to only open during specific hours.
- If you want to be certain that each Realtor has a confirmed appointment before showing your home, your Realtor can have a “call before showing code” put on the box. This is a double check to make sure each Realtor that shows the property calls the brokerage ahead of time and obtains the code to open the box.
- The box records the name of each Realtor that opens the box, as well as the date and time it was opened, so there is no uncertainty about who showed your property or when.
- Additional information can be recorded digitally in the box, such as an alarm code, or reminder about pets that it transmitted to the Realtor’s key pad when the box is opened.
- The alternative is buyer’s Realtors have to pick up the key from your Realtor’s brokerage, or your Realtor has to be present for showings, or you have to be present for showings. When other homes on the market are easier to access, yours likely won’t be shown as often.
- Lastly, a side benefit of the key box… if you are uncertain whether you should allow someone access to your home, just have them open the box - only Realtors can open them!
Ok, enough about keyboxes…
When it comes to appointments you have a couple of options - your Realtor can arrange the appointments with you, or the buyer’s Realtors can arrange the appointments with you. We feel it is best to have the buyer’s Realtors call us, not you for a number of reasons:
- If you are unavailable to take the call, or return a message quickly, you may miss out on a showing opportunity.
- It can be inconvenient to receive calls from different people, who you don’t know and who may make requests you are uncomfortable with (early or late appointments for example) or give short notice.
- Your phone number is displayed in the database so Realtor’s can contact you directly - some people are uncomfortable with that.
- When discussing showings with the buyer’s Realtors you may accidentally give them information -such as why you are selling - that isn’t to your advantage.
Showings can certainly be inconvenient, especially since it is best if you leave the home (and remove any loud or large pets). Typically an appointment will not be at a specific time, but we be during a time range of about an hour - the buyer’s Realtor can’t give specific times when they are showing numerous homes in a row since it’s impossible to know how long each showing will take. Try to be as flexible as you can.
