Edgewood, WA Real Estate Blog

I posted the following comment this morning in response to Why Touring Your Home Isn’t RE.net Compatible and Other RE Fallacies.

Ah yes, the office tour… I concur. It’s a poor excuse for marketing offered up to anxious sellers. It always bothered me that tours were presented to a seller as meaningful exposure. And I must confess to having had and been on many office tours during 15 years with JLS.

In the end (I generally quit going or having them), the only time they were useful was if a home was otherwise very difficult to see (high end & appointment only).

The company line was that you needed to support your fellow agents by going on tour. Actually, it was a requirement for new agents to attend weekly office tours, ostensibly to learn the market and to “support” their fellow agents.

I always thought that if you had a buyer for whom a home might be a good match, why wait for the weekly office tour? You’re out the door the day it first comes on the market.

And if you’re keeping up with the market, it’s much quicker and efficient to tour alone or with one other like minded person. You only see the homes of the type and location in which you specialize.

Ditto with broker’s open houses.

I see so many agents desperate for traffic today. The level of bribes offered to tour a home keep rising. Again, I’m sure, offered up as meaningful exposure to a seller, which, of course is nonsense.

It’s one thing to offer a cup of coffee and a snack as a courtesy. Quite another to offer money or ‘big’ prizes. (It will be interesting to see how long that persists given the current title company issues and the deteriorating state of the mortgage business.)

If you think about it, a desperate listing agent will never know whether their traffic was legitimate, the result of the home (presentation) or a response to the level of a bribe.