Viewings and Feedback
When he is putting your property onto the market, Stuart Bruce (G&Y’s Estate Agency Manager) will discuss your preferred viewing arrangements with you.
This will include whether you would like your landline or mobile number made available to prospective viewers.
We find that the majority do want their contact telephone number on the property schedule, but it’s not compulsory.
The benefit of course is you can be contacted by potential viewers outwith office hours and at weekends.
Security checks
If you are elderly or just nervous about publicising your contact details, we would generally recommend that all viewing arrangements should be made through our office.
When we are contacted, we take the names and telephone numbers of all enquirers.
Interested parties can telephone us during working hours or they can email us.
We will then take their details and speak to you, and a viewing can be organised.
At that point in the process, you may be happy for us to pass on your contact telephone number, so that the viewer can make detailed arrangements with you.
However, as you can see, we can help in a screening role, providing an extra level of security.
How viewings work
In the majority of viewings, in our experience, it is the owner/occupier who conducts the viewing.
However, there are different ways of doing viewings, depending on your requirements.
We can provide an accompanied viewing service where either Eileen, or her colleague, Maddy Butler, will accompany viewers round the property.
This can be particularly important where, for example, it is house which is no longer occupied but still furnished.
Some people, for example, elderly clients, prefer us to conduct the viewings on their behalf.
This can be a method of dealing even where you, as the seller, are actually in the house. Though we will take the viewer round the property for you, there is always the option for you to meet the viewer, if you wish.
If the property is completely empty – which is typically the case with Executry sales – we will hold the keys to the property and, during office hours, will hand out the keys to prospective viewers. They can then go and have a look round the property at their leisure.
Benefit of conducting your own viewing
A big potential benefit is that, if you have someone looking round who seems genuinely interested, you can offer them a coffee, and sit down and have a chat with them.
Follow-up and feedback
All viewings organised through our office are followed up by us.
Generally, two or three days after the viewing has taken place we will try and contact the viewer by telephone. We will ask them for some feedback.
We don’t pester people; if we can’t contact them after a couple or so attempts, we do not try to follow-up further.
On the whole, people are happy to have a chat.
Sometimes, if we don’t get them first time and we leave them a message, they will email us with their comments.
We always ask you to try to keep a record of names and addresses of all people who contact you directly – and to pass that onto us, so we have a complete record, and we can then do all the follow-ups.
We follow up all viewings and feedback is given to you on a regular basis.
The most common feedback
In probably at least 50% of cases, the feedback received will include a comment that the viewer is not actually in a position to proceed with a purchase at the moment.
Studies have shown that about 42% of people are looking at properties without having sold their own property.
It means they have not even got their house on the market, in most cases.
Armed with that knowledge, it is tempting to say you will only show viewers round your house who have already sold their own properties.
Of course, you cannot stipulate that.
Our advice is that you have to make everybody welcome.
If you start trying to filter, you may be eliminating someone who could receive an acceptable offer for their own property later that week.
The situation is always fluid and you just have to go with it.
So, often, the feedback is: “It’s a nice house but I’ve still got to sell mine”.
Detailed feedback
We will try to press people to say what they do like about the house and whether they have any negative comments.
We sometimes get comments about the décor, especially if it is a house which needs a bit of TLC. These days, a lot of people do not want to take on a “project”; they want “walk-in” condition.
How we can help
If you have any questions about anything on this page or anything to do with our Estate Agency services, please do get in touch with us.
Stuart Bruce, our Estate Agency Manager, has over 15 years’ experience of property-related matters in Moray. He has lived in Moray and worked from the Elgin office of G&Y throughout that time. He can be contacted on 01343 544077. Alternatively, you can send us a Free Online Enquiry.
All initial enquiries are free of charge and there’s no obligation to take things further. We’ll do our best to help.