Have You Been In The House?

Twenty years ago when I started in real estate, my office manager insisted that before I could even talk on the phone with a potential home buyer or seller I had to go into every home on the market in Wayland and Sudbury. At the time there were approximately 80 in Wayland 180 in Sudbury (there was a lot of new construction; Willis Hills was still dirt!). That’s a lot of houses…. After a couple of months of going to broker open houses and previewing homes on my own, I vistied all of the houses.

Of course, that was long before a buyer could look for houses and see photos and detailed descriptions on the Internet. These days most people (I’ve read as many as 90%) who want to buy a home start their search online. And, it has become commonplace for agents to sign potential buyers up on their websites to be notified automatically when new listings come on. “Call me if you there’s anything you want to see.” Or some will even say “go to the open house on Sunday and let me know if you want to make an offer.”

All these years later, after seeing thousands (at least 4 or 5 or more per week for 20 years) of houses I still go to broker open houses on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Why? Because even with all of the information and pictures on the Internet, home buyers still ask me “have you been in the house?”, and people who are planning to sell also ask; they want to know if I have seen the “comps”(the houses that are being used to suggest a listing price). They expect me to know the inventory and to be able to give them an unbiased opinion. Remember, the photos and descriptions on the listings are put there by agents whose job it is to sell the property so they are not going to show or say anything that might dissuade a potential buyer. Also, not everyone with a digital camera is a great photographer!

While “a picture is worth a thousand words”, being in a house or knowing how to interpret photos and ad copy is priceless! I can’t count how many times a buyer client has said “this doesn’t look anything like the pictures…” or a seller client has said “wow, these pictures make my house look great, maybe we’ll stay… :) ”. 

Houses are living and breathing structures, they have feel, a vibe, sometimes a smell (good or bad), maybe a defect or some clutter that didn’t make it into the photo. Is the house clean? Is there sunlight? Indoor photos often make a house look dark especially at this time of year; buyers want to know about light, it’s important to how they feel. Houses sit on land – what else is in the neighborhood, how busy is the road, is the area wet, or on ledge? How far is it set back? Is there a backyard? Does the driveway slope? If there’s an addition, does it blend with the rest of the house? The Internet cannot answer these questions.

The majority of houses in Wayland and Sudbury are owner-occupied. Buyers looking in these towns want a warm, secure, safe, happy, comfortable place to live, a reasonable commute to work, with good schools and a sense of community. They want to love their home! When people are selling their largest asset and often the place that housed their best memories, they want an agent who really knows what’s going on; not one who’s just looking at the pictures and telling them what they want to hear.