The Macomb County Michigan Real Estate Blog

Do you show homes to total strangers?

Just wondering? Have you ever set up a showing on another REALTORS© listing without ever meeting the buyer? Let's say they called you from your IDX website. Perhaps they called off one of your office's listing. Let's say that you felt the phone call went pretty good and may be worth meeting a unqualified buyer at the listing .

I ask because I currently have a vacation property of mine for sale in another Michigan city nearly 200 miles away from home. The listing broker has called me several times asking if she could show it. I have said yes, but started wondering based on her feedback if she even asked the potential buyers any qualifying questions and got a verified answer. Or was she just showing my property in hopes of "double dipping" it?

The buyer market in Michigan may be tempting REALTORS© to act without thinking? Are REALTORS© jumping to show a property to anyone who breathes? Honestly, do you ALWAYS meet, qualify and question a potential buyer BEFORE showing a property? I bet most of us have flown into our car (at least once) as soon as a buyer inquired?

Does the seller/public know this? Do they care? Is this the way our industry is heading? Heading this way because of the economy, the competition, the Internet?

Why aren't the active days on market (DOM) displayed on agent/REALTOR® public and IDX websites?

Is it because, like I recently heard from a top producer, "DOM information is the one last thing that we have that the public still needs us for!"? She mentioned "It is the thing of value" that she brings to the transaction.

In our local MLS, the DOM field is available to subscribers to view but NOT printed on the most important page, the buyer profile. Buyer brokers use DOM to assist in determining how low of an offer to prepare for the seller. Seems like it is such a valuable field (number) that can't be removed from the agent/REALTOR® reports but carefully hidden from the buyer until we provide it? Is this contradictory? The only fields that our MLS does not distribute to IDX and the public sites are the active DOM, agent remarks and commission arrangements.

If the active DOM is removed from all displays and reports, the seller would be the beneficiary, NOT the buyer, and NOT the appraiser.

The resistance I keep hearing over and over again is from the other subscribers/parties who benefit from the listing brokers agreement with the seller. Remember, the listing begins with the seller NOT the buyer, appraiser, or the REO company. Why are we NOT removing the DOM from all active listings on all MLS displays?

I believe the only DOM that needs to be collected and shared, is the sold DOM. After all, that is the "true" number of days it takes to sell the property at an agreeable sales price.

Other posts on this subject include:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/97915/Ditching-days-on-market

http://activerain.com/blogsview/60626/How-much-is-that

http://activerain.com/blogsview/55345/What-if-we-remove

http://activerain.com/blogsview/53927/-Days-on-the