805 Local

Thursday morning: “Sounds good. Let’s meet at the office at 10:00 a.m Saturday to look at homes.”

Better check the MLS to see how many properties suit this buyer’s criteria.  Wow!  There is a total of 46 just in Camarillo plus there is an additional 55 homes that meets the criteria in Thousand Oaks.  That’s a lot of ground to cover.  We better get out there and start doing previews of homes to eliminate what not to show and create a list of what to show on Saturday morning.

Thursday afternoon: with appointments made and armed with Multiple Listing print outs, Supra programmers, maps, tank full of gasoline, cell phones and water, we head out to  find the ‘cream’ to show on Saturday morning.

Several we could eliminate quickly based on location, neighborhood and number of cars on the street.  Ooops, the next house the listing broker forgot to install a key safe, the next house has an alarm but the code is not in the listing, the next has a day sleeper but no warning noted on the print out, the next house has two inside barking dogs. And the list goes on.  We enter a vacant house and both of us start itching — the house has fleas. Yikes and both of us are allergic to fleas (note to self – remember to spray yourself for fleas before showing property).  Six of the following houses required that we have a time specific appointments with the listing agent to show — that is difficult to do when actually showing property due to the fact that we never know how long a potential buyer will want to spend in a house).  Enough, to be continued…..

Friday morning: We filter back through the lists of homes that we previewed the previous day and decide to show ten of the properties.  Next step – route the houses from the office.  Start making appointments to show the ten houses.  Backtrack – we cannot show two of the houses on Saturday but Sunday would be okay with sellers; that won’t work.  Another house was not available to show because the seller was making cookies and another seller could not decide if they really wanted to sell or to stay put.  Wow, we are down to six houses to show on Saturday.  Better go preview a few more houses this morning.  With more MLS print outs in hand, we head back out to preview more houses.

Friday afternoon:After previewing several more homes, we come up with another list of ten homes to show on Saturday morning.  Before calling it a day, it is time to get the car washed.  You don’t want to show property in a dirty car!  Plus, we need another full tank of gasoline.

Friday night: Back to routing the houses that we are going to be showing the next morning — so we start calling to make appointments.  Instead of the typical time range to show, three of the houses require an exact time appointment.  Better figure those times in the routing.  Next, print out information about each house for the clients; people like a program for a play and they like MLS print outs when they look at property.  One more thing – better check the alarm code for one property and secure the gate code for another.  That’s it – we are ready.

Friday night later: One more thing – do a ‘radius search’ in the MLS for each of the homes that are scheduled to be shown.  Buyers always ask about nearby homes whether the houses are on the market or not.  We need to be ready to answer any of their questions regarding recent sales and neighborhood activity.  Okay start searching ten different neighborhoods and print out two copies.  Ready to report for duty in the morning.

Saturday morning: We arrive at the office early (armed for fleas – see Thursday afternoon) and check the MLS to discover if there are any changes in the status of the homes we will be showing.  Perhaps one went ‘pending’ or maybe a new listing came on the market.  We get a call from one of the listing agents of a property we will be showing.  She needs to change the appointment showing time.  (Well, that phone call changed the routing of all showings!)  Not a problem – as we juggle to rearrange the routing order and make the appropriate calls to inform the sellers.

Saturday morning 10:30 a.m.: We get the phone call.  The buyers cancelled……

Ah, the GLAMOROUS life of a REALTOR! But, we wouldn’t change it for the world! The upside of the week is, we were there for someone in need that we never would have met otherwise; we were able to find solutions for newlyweds who’s dreams were becoming a nightmare; and the other stuff…well, we’ll work it all out.

In an under appreciated industry, we’d like to declare this week, Realtor appreciation week. It’s been a rough couple of years for many of us and a little bit of appreciation would sure go along way.

Here’s to you our colleagues! We applaud you all! We are sure you all can relate!