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One promise I make my clients who list their home for sale with me, is that I will gather feedback and share it with them. As a recipient of all types of feedback requests, I know what I like, and what I don’t like. For example, I’ve yet to meet an email feedback request that I like. I could go on and on about all of the misuses of email, but feedback, honestly, has to be near the top of that list for me. They always seem to ask the wrong questions, and are so impersonal, I can’t see how they provide legitimate value the majority of the time. Instead, I prefer to have a discussion over the phone, rather than a one way dialogue in email or on a web form.
That was the best feedback I’ve received in years.
That’s what Jaime Honigman in my office told me after she finished getting feedback from me on a showing for one of her listings in Desert Ridge on Friday. Admittedly, providing feedback to an agent in your own office, versus a faceless agent you’ve never met in person, is likely to result in a better exchange of information. However, I doubt I would respond differently to anyone else, as long as the discussion doesn’t move in a direction that detracts from my fiduciary obligations to my client.
For this particular showing, my clients spent nearly an hour in the home. They were interested, they knew the area, they had a number of questions, and they provided me with feedback that I could pass along. Sometimes I get a nugget or two to pass along, while other times all I really get is, “we didn’t like it.”
During any feedback request, price will invariably be a topic. The typical question is, “What do you think of the price?” The typical answer is, “My client’s think it is too high.” As a buyer’s agent, if you answer anything other than that, you are probably not serving your client’s best interest. Knowing this, I don’t like the typical question.
Instead, I beat Jaime to the question and asked, “How did you establish your list price?” I believe this is a far better angle to approach the subject. Jaime highlighted comparable properties, and how the seller’s decision to price the home was based on those specific comparables. What a perfect answer.
Property condition should always be a discussion topic when asking for feedback, so we discussed the upgrades in the home versus other homes in the area, which are this home’s #1 selling point. We also discussed the carpet. This particular home has dirty carpet. When a buyer sees dirty carpet they will naturally assume an attempt to clean the carpet has failed, and that it won’t come clean and thus needs to be replaced. If a seller hasn’t attempted to clean their carpet before the home is listed, they are making a mistake that could cost them thousands instead of hundreds.
Another topic that should be discussed when gathering feedback surrounds convenience. Showings need to be as convenient as possible, so if any aspect of getting into the home wasn’t convenient, we want to know about it. Was the lockbox difficult to find? Was the door difficult to open? Were the pets in the property trouble-some? What can be done to make future showings more convenient, if this one wasn’t.
And finally, I always seek to answer any questions the buyer’s may have that aren’t answered in the listing or aren’t obvious when viewing the property. In this case, the HOA fee wasn’t noted in the listing and was something my clients asked about. I know Desert Ridge has an inexpensive HOA, but I couldn’t remember the exact fee off the top of my head.
6 responses so far ↓
Steve - I primarily use email feedback requests. And for one main reason. When I’m out with a buyer and we look at 5-10 homesin a day, I try and make notes after we leave each home, so that if need be we can go back through and review what we saw, refocus and continue on if we didn’t find the right home. So when a listing agent calls me, sometimes the next day as they should, but most of the time 2,3,4 or even more days after the showings, if I don’t have my notes in front of me for those showings that day, which, odds are I don’t, I can most of the time offer them no feedback because I don’t remember. However, if I get an email request, I can grab my notes and respond to the listing agent with some substantial feedback, that might do them some good.
As a buyer’s agent, how do you handle feedback request phone calls when you can’t remember which house they are asking about?
If I need to consult my notes, and for big showing days (10+ homes) that’s quite likely, I’ll promise to call back when I have my notes. I’m doing what you are doing, waiting to consult my notes, but I’ll agree to a return call, if they want to wait.
I know there are many people that like to conduct business via email. However, I feel there’s a lot lost in translation in email. Voice inflections, pauses, tone…it all adds up to what the agent really thinks. It goes that way when I’m a buyer’s agent talking to a listing agent, too. If I know my client is somewhat interested, reactions to follow-up questions from the listing agent are equally important to me. This feedback Q&A could very well be the first negotiating step in a successfully closed transaction.
Feedback’s a mixed bag … most agents don’t remember a particular property. And my main interest is whether there’s something seriously egregious or whether there’s any interest. If all I’m going to get is “it showed well but my clients like one around the corner” then I’d just as soon pass on the whole exercise.
I have to agree with Steve AND Jonathan on this one. On one hand it is not really worth the time if you get a no information kind of answer. However, if you can be good about asking the right questions, then feedback can be very valuable. Here is a question for you both. How much of your feedback as buyer’s agents comes directly from the buyers? Do you readily include your opinion or just tell the agent what the buyers thought about the property?
And Steve was worried you stopped reading his blog.
If I have feedback from the buyer I’ll pass it along, but I try to make it constructive. As often as not a home is DQ’d because of floor plan or layout or something outside the seller’s control.
I’ll also throw in my two cents if there’s something major that I notice, even if my buyers’ didn’t.
One area in which I differ from Steve is I don’t ask about price. It’s my job as the listing agent to know the market and know the price. If I’m soliciting that, it’s only to help sell a price reduction to my seller. But usually you’re reducing the price because of a lack of activity.
As a listing agent, I rarely ask about price as well, unless I get a sense a buyer is on the fence, due to price. Then I’ll needle in to find out what price they might be willing to offer. But that’s the kind of discussion that happens well into a conversation, when you get the sense you might be close, and there aren’t objections over the floorplan, features, etc. It’s really the beginnings of the negotiation, more than a feedback request, except when no offers comes though, then it ends up being feedback.
In the post, I was talking about price from a buyer’s agent perspective, which again has as much to do with negotiation, as it does with feedback.
As to my opinion vs. the buyer’s opinion, I typically provide some of each and make that clear as I’m answering. As an example, I’ve seen a kitchen painted green that I loved, but my client hated. Or Berber carpet that I nearly always love (I’m a Berber fan), but some clients hate. I typically dislike vinyl flooring (particularly in a kitchen), but some clients don’t care. I always hate carpet in the master bathroom, while again some clients don’t care.
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