Step 10 To Selling a Home: My Property is Live in the MLS. Now What?

The day has finally arrived! 

Congratulations, your home is now on the market and all the hard work you’ve put in to get your home ready to be photographed and shown should start paying off soon! So far you’ve done a lot of prep work to get your home market ready.

Our first showing request can come as quickly as the first hour we're in the MLS, but more realistically, it can take 24 to 36 hours before we get our first showing request. As soon as a request comes in, we will let you know via text, email or phone, depending on your preference and the system we've already worked out with you. In a perfect world, we hope the buyer’s REALTOR® to give us 24 hours notice for showings, but it’s not unusual (especially in the first few days of being a new listing) to get showing requests with just a few hours' notice...or fewer. It's a good idea to be ready for a showing at any time when your home is listed, so when you leave each day, plan to have showings even if we don’t have one on the calendar. If that is an issue due to pets at home, kids' schedules, working from home, etc., let us know and we can require 24 hours' notice.

Once a showing request comes in, you can approve it, deny it, or ask for a different day/time. Remember, the quicker we can get buyers into your place and the fewer showings we have to deny or reschedule, the quicker we can get your place under contract. Our mantra is that the buyer shouldn’t have to work around our schedule, which is why we always put a lockbox on every property we sell. We want to get buyers in as quickly as possible and, in order to do that, we need to work around their schedule.

A typical showing appointment window is 1 hour. Most agents are showing their buyers multiple properties, so it may not be possible for them to give us a specific and exact arrival time. We ask that you be out of the home 15 minutes before the appointed showing time, just in case the buyer and their REALTOR® show up a few minutes early. If your time is limited on that particular day or if you have to rush back home, we can ask that the REALTOR® text us when they are done with the showing; however, we don't ever want the buyer to feel rushed while in your home and we have to remember that the agent has a lot on their minds when out showing properties and, even if they agree to send us that text, it's possible they may forget.

As soon as a showing is finished, the buyer’s REALTOR® will immediately get an email asking for feedback and if their client is interested in the home. While we would love to get feedback and the buyer's thoughts every time your house is shown, unfortunately only about 30% of REALTORS® take the time to give us feedback. If we do receive feedback we will immediately forward it on to you via email to review. Don’t be surprised when we don’t get feedback and don’t be offended by feedback. We’re only looking for that ONE buyer who loves your home. For most, your home won’t be the right fit for various reasons, but we only need to find THE ONE.

Lastly, once your home is live in the MLS, we will send you a copy of the listing sheet to review, as well as links to a variety of other places that your home appears on the internet (it's impossible for us to send you every site on which your home will appear, so this will just be a representative few). Please review the MLS listing carefully and let us know of any errors (please keep in mind: we only have direct control over the MLS listing, but in most cases, if we make a change on the MLS, it will also change across the web). In addition, if you didn’t like how we phrased something or feel we left out an important point, let us know.  Remember, we’re a team and we want to get your house sold just as much as you do!

Questions? Call us at 404-994-2181 or email Maura(at)BuySellLiveAtlanta(dot)com.