I still love helping buyers. I don’t do it as much as I used to because I am running the company and most buyer requests are given to my very good team of agents who give great service. Our buyers get their own Listingbook account for MLS home searches, automatic email updates when a home that fits their criteria hits the market, and of course many of my buyers look on other websites also.
There is one thing that perplexes me about some buyers that I haven’t been able to quite figure out. In speaking with colleagues I am not alone in this. I am not sure if they do this exactly on purpose or not, but it seems like they do: While searching for a home online, they find a home of interest. So far so good. Then, they must immediately turn their computers off without writing anything down or bookmarking the property and call me with sparse information on the house they just saw, and I have to triangulate the sketchy details they vaguely recall to figure out what listing it is, often in my car! They might remember a town, a price, maybe a street, or even a physical description. But no address or MLS number, and certainly no email to the link.
Now it seems to me that just about every home search site out there has a means of bookmarking a favorite property or emailing it to your agent. And if it doesn’t you can always write down the address or MLS number. But all too often, I’ll get a call on my mobile phone while I am driving from a buyer who wants to see the green house in Thornwood by the church near that big rock with all those trees in the yard. I’m exaggerating of course, but the ID of a property should never be that hard if you just saw the thing online. Write it down, email it, get a photo of your computer screen with the digital camera, whatever it takes, but help me help you! If you email it, even by right clicking and copying the link in an email to me, it will get me the needed information without having to reconstruct what you did to find it. And the less detective work I have to do, the better I can help.
So, to all you buyers that call your agent (often in their cars) with less than full information on the property as if we are wizards (we do have the MLS after all), please just do us this one teensy favor: write it down or email the thing to us so we can do less detective work, keep safe in our cars, and devote more resources toward advocating for you.
If you get a free Listingbook account you can notify me of the properties you like effortlessly!