(EP: 161) Home Buyer Tips & Etiquette - How to make home showings more fun

Home Buyer Tips & Etiquette

[00:00:00] BoKauffmann-REALTOR: Let's talk about tips and home buying etiquette. On this episode of Winnipeg's real estate podcast,

All right. Welcome to this episode of Winnipeg's real estate podcast. Today, we're going to talk about some tips and etiquette for home buyers to follow. What do I mean by that? So you're looking at houses and likely on a Saturday afternoon, let's say you're going to go out and look at four or five houses back to back with your agent.

We call that a home viewing tour. And today we're going to talk about tips to make that, that whole tour go a little smoother, a little less troublesome just make the whole experience a little bit better for you. But also some etiquette and some rules to follow. Because as a buyer in this hot sellers market, you want to stand out for the great offer you make, not for the rules.

Your break sounds like a song in there. So let's we're going to break this episode down into three different sections. The first one is going to be what to bring and where during these home showings, second one is going to be what not to bring what not to do. And the third one is how to act in sponsor inside the house.

So let's go.

All right. So remember it says, like, let's say a Saturday afternoon, you gotta look at four or five houses in a row. And this first tip is really helpful in the winter wear comfortable shoes you can slip on and off. If you've got these big mukluks that tie up halfway to your knee, you'll spend a lot of time taking them off and putting them back on from going from one showing to the next.

So we're comfortable. Slip-on shoes next, bring a pen and pad. Now each listing will probably have a listing sheet waiting for you so you can grab that, but there's always going to be questions or things that aren't on there that you might want to mark down for yourself. If you're looking at five houses in a row, it's easy to get them.

You know, you end up forgetting which one needed the new bathroom upgrader, which one had the really ugly floor here or there. So it's good to mark that down. So bring your own pants. And last bring a mask and sanitizer. Yes. COVID is still a thing. I remember you going into other people's houses. So we are still expected to wear masks because people live there and there's showings after us.

So once inside you're going to be touching the fridge. You're going to be touching doorknobs, closets, stuff like that. Plus there was people there before us, so you might want to sanitize going in and coming out up next. We're going to talk about what. We'll be right back after this short announcement.

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Rob white today at 2 0 4 7 9 1 8 0 2 4. All right. So let's start with some of the things that not to do. Leave the food and the and the drinks in the car. Let's say you picked up a cup of coffee on the way to your showings or a sandwich or a banner, a hoagie. Leave those in the car. Don't bring food into somebody else's house.

As I can hear the eyeballs rolling. Oh my God. Bowl where you're telling us that it's because it's been done and then coffee gets spilled and it, it's not, it's not a good thing. Next is keep the the viewing group. Now if you're a young couple chances are you want your parents' approval, maybe they're even putting money in for the down payment.

They're definitely want, want to have a look at the house. And I encourage that. In fact, if we're looking at 20 houses, I would encourage that you bring all decision-makers to as many of their showings as possible. Because the last thing we want to do is get into a situation where we looked at 20. You like one and you bring your parents back for like an approval and they haven't seen the other 19 and they go, oh my God, this house is 400,000 no way.

Well, it's a good thing to have them along for the other viewings as well, so that they get a sense for the market. Having said that if you're a young. You likely have two sets of parents. Maybe you have an uncle that's knowledgeable in construction, and you want to bring your sister along for approval too.

Before you know, it there's eight or 10 of us going into a showing. And that becomes unmanageable. You see your agent is responsible for that house for the entire time that you're in there. And ideally your agent will keep the whole group. That way when, when the homeowner complains that something's damaged or something's missing, your agent can honestly say, well, look, my whole group, I was with them the entire time.

So you can imagine if there's eight of us and two people go up to the second floor to go into the basement. Obviously you lose control of that situation. Bring the decision-makers, but keep it as small as. In fact, during the height of COVID, there were many listings, which specifically said only three people into the house at any one time.

That is the buying couple and their agent period. They weren't allowing kids in. Now, some of these things have changed and some of the rules have relaxed. There's still a limit. So keep the groups manageable which brings us to the next one, leave the kids. Look, let's talk, honestly, here, your three-year-old is not going to decide whether or not you liked the house.

Maybe the, maybe your, your boy or your girl hate the house. You still going to buy it. So when you have one or two kids along, it is just another pair of shoes to put on and take off. It's another hand to hold onto because you do have to keep control of your child. And if you go into a bedroom like a sellers, child's bedroom, there's toys there.

Guess what your kid wants to. And they can't children want to jump on furniture or jump on beds. And every time you say no, they start getting a little, little less interested in looking at more houses because they can't go play in these things anyway. So I've had situations whereby the third showing by the third.

One of the parents had to stay in the car with a three-year-old while the other parent came, looked at the house and had a quick, you know, a quick look and then went and tagged off so that the second parent can come look at the house. Very cumbersome. It interrupts the whole flow and interrupts the showing best.

Leave the kiddos at home with a sitter, with a parent, with a neighbor. And if. Hey, make me the bad guy. Just tell him the agent won't and the agent doesn't allow it, but it makes for a whole better viewing experience. Funny story here while it's funny. Now it wasn't at the time I had a listing up in Amber trail, so I was representing the.

And an agent called to book showing. Now I don't meet the agent. I certainly don't know who his buyers are, but they booked a showing for let's say a Saturday, two o'clock. So my sellers leave the house. The agent goes in, my sellers came home at a reasonable time, like almost 45 minutes later, but the people were still inside.

So my sellers hung back. They stayed in their car and they watched everybody come out. So after it was all done, my sellers called me and said, The front door opened, the agent comes out and after that, it was like a, like a circus clown car, about 10 or 11 people came out to make matters worse. The seller goes inside and finds that somebody has been laying on their bed, on their marital bed.

You, you don't do that. So I call the agent, the buyer's agent expecting that maybe the kids had jumped on the bed, turns out no one of the uncles thought it was a good idea to lay down on, on somebody else's. So again, keep groups small, keep the kids at home and it makes for a better viewing time, better showing time all around and last we can have time be on time because I'm showing times are limited.

So if you've got a, a showing window from 10 till 10 30, that's your entire window. So if you only show up at 10 15, you're only hurting yourself. You're cutting back. You're showing by 15 minutes because at 10 30, somebody else will be knocking on the door and wanting to come in. So. Keep, keep the group small.

And when we come back, we'll talk about what we can and can't do inside the house. We'll be right back after this short announcement.

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Call Mike Schroeder today at (204) 229-3214. All right. So now we've entered the house. Hopefully we're the only ones in there. You and your agent. First thing to do, definitely take shoes off unless the house is a, an entire like something that has to be torn down. Keep your shoes. If you have to, perhaps the basement is unfinished, it's got concrete floor.

Yes. You can carry them up to the basement and walk down there. But throughout the house, definitely keep your shoes off. So in the summertime, it's a good idea. Especially ladies, if you wear slippers or something like that, and you take them off, all of a sudden, now you've got bare feet. You're walking on hardwood floors and you're leaving your sweaty footprints on somebody else's.

So you might want to take some, some socks that you. Next, once you inside the house, everything that's included in the listing is fair game. So you can open the fridge, open the stove check inside, check inside the dishwasher. If the washer dryer are included. Absolutely. You can open them open cupboards doors, kitchen drawers, stuff like that.

Just not dresser drawers. Don't jump on the bed. Don't open night tables, that kind of thing. Just stuff that is included in the. As mentioned earlier, keep control of the kids and avoid toilet use. Now I understand that emergencies to happen. For example, you've got a pregnant lady and it's just, you know, you just have, you got to go when you got to go, but sellers really frowned upon somebody using their toilet and then heaven forbid, Lea leave it messy again.

It's happened. Try and make a pit stop in between the showings or do everything you need to do before they're showing. But toilet use is frowned upon. Same with washing your hands. Of course, if you've used the toilet, please wash your hands. But other than not just using the, using the facilities in any way is not a cool thing.

And lastly, it's always a good idea to leave the house in exactly the same condition as the way you found it. If you walk into a room and the light was off and you turn it on, please turn it off. Opening closet doors, please close them again. I've had sellers quite upset that when they came home, all the closets were left open.

So please just leave the house exactly the way you found it. Well, I hope you found these tips helpful, make your next showing tour or viewing tour a little bit less stressful. Cause it is a stressful market to begin with. And like I said, you want your offer to stand out. You don't want your actions to mark us somebody, the seller doesn't want to do this.

Checkout Winnipeg's real estate podcast with weekly market updates, news and advice for home buyers and sellers produced by award-winning agent Bo Kauffmann of Remax performance Realty available on all major broadcasters, including iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and more. Find them at Bono's dot Holmes slash podcast.

Missing an episode could be hazardous. Are you looking to buy a house or a condo in Winnipeg work with the agent who takes the time to explain the process to you, guiding you through every step for service beyond the sale book, your home buying consultation with Bo Kauffmann of Remax performance today, Bo knows real estate.