What Happens at a House Showing?

And Signs a House Showing Went Well

What happens when agents are showing your home for sale? Are there negatives to showing your house while living in it? And what are the signs a house showing went well?

There’s no question that COVID-19 dramatically shifted the showing process in Canada, with extra attention paid to safety and social distancing. Now, with restrictions practically non-existent across the country and people resuming more face-to-face interactions, here’s a quick refresher of what home sellers can expect when showing their homes.

Showings Vs Open Houses

Showings and open houses are different.

An “open house” is when the seller opens the door to anyone who wants to pop in for a closer look. This method of showing a listing was prevalent until the pandemic hit in early 2020. Homebuyers would scour property listings all week, plot their open-house route online, pile in the car for a couple of hours on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and browse the market.

Times and processes may have changed, but the principles of showing homes and appealing to homebuyers haven’t diverged much in the last 30 years. However, if you have never sold a home, you’re likely wondering what happens at a house showing and the tell-tale signs a house showing went well.

COVID-19 prompted a mandatory shift in how homes are shown and seen. Government-mandated health and safety measures paused the “open-door” policy in favour of virtual home tours as a no-contact way of showing listings. Once buyers found a listing that met their criteria for a new home, they would venture out, masked, and view the house in person. Some homebuyers even took the transaction completely virtual, with the showing, offer, negotiations and final paperwork all done remotely.

Today, the convenience of the virtual sale continues to be a trend unlikely to wane, thanks to technology. On the other hand, with national indicators of COVID-19 infections decreasing – including the percentage of positive tests, the number of test-confirmed outbreaks, and thankfully, the rate of weekly hospitalizations, many Canadians are eager to return to their post-pandemic ways of doing things. For homebuyers and sellers, this includes in-person showings.

What Happens at a House Showing?

Here’s what you can expect when showing your home for sale and how to maximize the opportunity in order to yield higher offers and a quicker sale.

Schedule as Many Showings as There is Interest

When homebuyers find a listing they’d like to purchase, most will want to view it in person before making an offer. In a hot seller’s market, where timing is everything, buyers will be eager to see it as soon as possible. In a cooler market, although buyers have time to shop and consider their purchase in greater detail, the showing period is still critical.

During the selling period, sellers should be ready to make themselves available to communicate with their listing agent multiple times per day if needed and be prepared to show the home in short order. Sellers may request that their agent give them a couple of hours notice, but it’s in the seller’s best interest to be as flexible as possible. Sellers also need to stay mindful of any factors that may impact the timing of showings, such as the time needed for a quick clean-up – especially if you’re showing your house while living in it – or any time required to empty the home of pets and people (more on that, below!).

How Will You Know When There’s a Showing?

Discuss the best way to arrange and schedule showings with your real estate agent beforehand. Choose a mode of communication that you’ll have easy access to and will check often. This can include but is not limited to, an email, a phone call, a text message, a calendar invite or a notification from a scheduling app. This way, you have the best chance of receiving advance notice and being able to act on it if necessary.

Who Shows the Home?

During the showing, prospective buyers will be accompanied by their agent. If the buyer isn’t represented by an agent, they’ll typically contact your listing agent directly and arrange a walkthrough with them.

While it’s entirely at the seller’s discretion, most homeowners will vacate the property during showings, which typically last 15 to 30 minutes. Unless an agent requests you to be there to explain or demonstrate a special feature of the home (for example, a retracting roof over an indoor pool) during the showing, it’s best to go for a walk, drive, or do some errands. Just go! Having homeowners present during showings can turn some buyers off, create an awkward situation when discussing their honest feelings about the place, and make it difficult for buyers to picture themselves living in the home.

If you’re in a hot market or a popular area and expecting lots of showings, it might be a good time to book a holiday away from home. This reduces the inconvenience to you while ensuring the house stays in “showing condition” without constant clean-up on your part. If you decide to take a vacation, make it a staycation, as this isn’t the time to head off to a different country or be incommunicado. You want to be ready to answer any questions the buyer’s agent might forward to yours and be close enough to review offers as they come in.

What Happens During the Showing?

The homebuyers will have access to your property during their pre-determined showtime – typically a one-hour slot. They are expected to arrive, view and leave within that time. Their agent will walk them through the home, ensuring they remove their shoes, follow protocols, and answer any questions the buyers might have. If the agent isn’t sure of an answer, they will forward the prospective buyer’s question to the listing agent, who, if they are unable to answer it, will forward it to you.

During the showing, you can expect buyers to peek into cabinets, cupboards and closets and maybe even measure them from top to bottom. Furniture drawers and the like are off-limits since you’ll be taking those with you when you move, but anything that is built-in will be assessed for storage capacity, quality and condition.

Buyers also typically test the utilities by running the water taps, flushing toilets, checking light switches and plugging their mobile phones into electrical outlets. Some buyers may also use this opportunity to do a cursory or even a detailed home inspection, so if they choose to make an offer, they can do so without this condition. If the buyers want to do a cursory or detailed home inspection during the showing, this should be communicated to and approved by the listing agent and the seller beforehand.

During the pandemic, some sellers chose to leave closet doors open and lights on to help minimize physical contact with their household surroundings. When the showing is complete, the buyers’ agent is responsible for ensuring the property is left in the same condition in which it was found and that the door is locked. This means that if the lights were off when the agent and buyers entered, they would typically turn them off again as a courtesy and help keep sellers’ electrical bills low.

If you’re not showing your house while living in it or on a staycation, you can use a timer to turn on lights automatically so it appears someone is living there. You can also invest in a motion-activated outdoor lighting system for an extra bit of added presence.

RELATED READING: House showing tips for buyers viewing homes virtually

After the Showing

Now that you know exactly what happens at a house showing, what’s next?

Depending on market conditions, it can be a waiting game. If the buyer has any follow-up questions or would like to make an offer, communication generally happens between the buying and listing agents. If the buyers choose to pass on the property, many listing agents reach out to the buying agent to get feedback on the listing in order to understand what, if any of, the price, condition or features of the home may have turned the buyers off. If the house isn’t selling, this feedback can prove valuable when revisiting the listing strategy.

Signs a House Showing Went Well

Of course, there are clear signs a house showing went well, generally coming in the form of a speedy offer at or over the asking price!

But before that, there are a variety of indicators that a buyer may be interested in your home.

Signs a house showing went well include:

• The buyers’ facial expressions and body language are positive. Even when buyers are trying NOT to look interested, their relaxed posture, nudging or nodding to each other can reveal that they are.
• They ask lots of questions, start to go deep into details or offer critiques on various spaces. Buyers do not need to ask questions if they’re not interested in your house. Similarly – although not always pleasant to experience – if a buyer starts critiquing certain aspects of your home, they’re likely interested and intending to make an offer but are trying to mask their excitement.
• They focus on spaces that are important to them. If a buyer lingers in a kitchen, master bedroom, by the pool, or wherever, they’re telling you that these spaces are important to them, they already like what they see or are determining the changes they’ll make once the house is theirs.
• They’ve already mentally moved in. If buyers start talking about what bedroom would be best for which kid, what furniture would fit where or if they pull out a measuring tape and start sizing up a space, they’re interested.
• The buyers stay for a long time. In today’s market, finding the home of your dreams or missing out by just a few minutes is all about timing. As a result, if buyers aren’t interested in your home, they’ll cut the showing short, make their exit and head out to see another property or begin browsing online again.
• They ask for a second showing and bring a family member, architect or home inspector along for the ride. They’re interested and almost ready to make an offer.
• The buyer’s real estate agent calls back immediately, enquiring whether there are other offers on the table, if there’s any flexibility around sale price, closing date preferences, etc. The buyers like the house and are about to make an offer.
• They ask for a pre-offer inspection. They like the house and are about to make an offer.

Contemplating buying or selling a home soon? Connect with a RE/MAX agent and see the difference that adding an experienced real estate professional to your team can make.