Never Show Only One House

I am going to share with you the Golden Rule of real estate: Never show just one house to one person.
Ms. Buyer: “Hey, Evan, I’d like to go see a house, but I really only want to look at 62 Main Street. I saw the pictures and I really like this house. I like the location. I think this is the house for me. This is the only one I want to see.”

So, say I agree to this meeting. There are two ways this can play out.

What usually happens is this: I take the buyer and do what she wants. I take the time to set up the appointment, the time to drive over to meet up with her, the buyer takes the time out to meet me there, possibly even corrals someone to join her for another perspective only to open the door and have it be a nightmare of a house, smells like cat pee, or smoke, or the pictures only showed the one half of the kitchen that was any good, then, of course, it’s immediately NOT the house for her. We all end up back out at the street and Ms. Buyer asks, “Ok, Evan, that’s not going to work out. Is there anything else you can show me?” Well, no, because you insisted that you only see this one house— All of that effort for just one house that you all were probably only in for about three minutes.

On the other hand, when confronted with the same insistence, of course, I agree, but instead I ask Ms. Buyer to set aside an extra hour so I can show her other homes, maybe three or four additional houses that are about the same price and style that is comparable to the ones she seems to be leaning toward. In this case, time isn’t wasted. Most likely she will be agreeable to that. If she persists on just seeing the one house, it’s in your best interest to just set up the other appointments anyway so you are prepared in the event that this occurs again. There is nothing more frustrating then setting up the one appointment and having that house be completely wrong for the buyer. Always set several appointments up, just in case. It’s never a waste of time to have a back up plan.