The WOW Factor

If you know anything about me then you know I am all about creating the WOW factor for my listings. Well, I wrote this blog to tell you about the WOW factor I saw when I took my buyers to see a home last Saturday.

The pictures of the home were great and I could instantly see why my buyers wanted this home. They have been looking for a few months and are very particular about what they want. Knowing exactly what you want is a good thing.

I was able to get them the first showing of the day on the first day of the listing. Score! The agent shared that there were 10 showings that day.

We pulled up to the home and this is where the WOW factor kicked in. Not the WOW factor you may be thinking. This home was absolutely nothing like the one in the pictures. The pictures showed a wonderfully decorated, clean, crisp-looking model home. In person however…this is what we saw:

· Junk on the porch

· Political signs in the yard

· Inside the home was completely cluttered

· Half-packed and open boxes laying in every room

· Blankets on the mater room windows

· Bills and paperwork laying out in open on the desk

All of the above shows lack of organization, lack of pride of home ownership and lack of urgency to showcase your home. The only exception is the political sign. Regardless of the candidate, you should pull this down while selling your home. Obviously they have the right to display their sign and I am all for it. However, when you do this, you instantly put a negative feeling in the head of 70% of the people coming to see your home. After all, you are trying to sell your home. Wait until you get an offer accepted and then put all the signs up you want.

But wait, there’s more. When we tried to enter the home we were unable to. There was no lockbox on the door. As a matter of fact, there was no door knob on the door! The agent had to call a locksmith to open the home so we could see it. Automatically we could not help but feel that both the seller and the agent were shady and not to be trusted.

This was a home in an incredibly desirable area that should have had multiple offers and sold by Sunday. We had mental whiplash as we tried to reconcile what we saw online and what we saw in person.