Real Estate Showing:Setting up Showings (Buyer’s Perspective)

For those of you that are going through a real estate agent to buy your next home on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) their will be a process, and here is how it will most likely go. This job has changed a little over the last 5-10 years. In today’s world the buyer typically does a little more viewing upfront online. This will include review details of listings, reviewing photos, reviewing any videos or virtual tours. Your agent can email you listings that meet your criteria, and he/she can even set this up as an email preference which will automatically email you when properties meet your criteria. You will just have to let the agent know what you are looking for. Now this process works best if you are already pre-approved for financing. This process may not make as much sense if you are buying on a rent to own or a contract for deed. The reason is that their is a very good chance 80-90% of all listed properties would not be open to either of those concepts. The agent can still show you some properties available on a contract for deed, their are a lot available, but you will have to be a little bit more open to properties, and less specific.

From time to time when you find a property you like that you want to go see, it’s preferred you look at a few in the same area on the same day if at all possible. You simply let your agent know you’d like to set up a showing and then they will call the listing broker’s office (that’s the broker who has the listing) and call to leave their name, number, office number, which company the buyer’s agent represents, etc. They will be given a code to enter the property. It’s pretty standard to give 24 hours notice on showings, if the house is vacant, very short notice may be possible.

The agent will bring the print outs of the various listings you chose and he/she will bring the access codes to enter the properties. They may plan the journey ahead of time and google map, or mapquest ahead of time how to get from property to property to make the most of everyone’s time. It’s not a bad idea to do this upfront. Houses with renters in them typically need a little more notice. Just remember on showings, sometimes the furniture is just staged furniture, sometimes their is no furniture. When you see the seller’s furniture in the house, just remember that doesn’t go with the house, so imagine the house without the furniture.
As a standard rule anything that’s “affixed” connected to the house is suppose to go with the house. Things that aren’t “attached” to the house like personal property, such as appliances, stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, etc are not connected to the house. It’s customary for buyer’s to negotiate them into the purchase agreement. The best way to handle this is to either write the appliances down on the first page of the purchase agreement or write a “bill of sale” for that stuff to be part of the purchase agreement. It’s customary that it’s part of the home loan. If that amount gets to be too much, the lender may not like that.

Just remember with showings, it’s in everyone’s best interest to do some homework upfront by looking at details upfront which school district houses are in, what size the rooms are, will it fit your furniture, etc. Then when something catches your eye, call the real estate agent, and he/she will set up some showings, and hopefully at this point it only takes 5 properties or less before you like and find that perfect house. In most cases the buyer’s agent gets paid from the listing agent when a transaction is closed with a lender. For sale by owners, rent to own, contract for deed’s will still likely be paid by the seller, but anything is possible.

Please contact me ron@minnesotainvestors.com and I’ll assign you to a buyer’s agent.

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