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We all know that we can handle more listings than buyers at one time. We can have many signs in different yards but only one set of buyers in the car at any one time.
In today’s unbalanced market, where there are more homes for sale than there are buyers, it is nice to have folks who want to buy. But one way to earn more money in real estate is in listing homes for sale. Let the buyer’s agents out there help us out. As listing agents, we have to help them, too. When we help the buyer’s agents, we help our sellers and ourselves at the same time. We can do this by making sure that our listing information in the MLS is accurate.
Double check your listing
Have you ever wondered why your listing isn’t getting as many showings as you think it should? Have you reviewed it several times for errors? Have you asked your seller to review the listing as well?
In the past year, I have shown properties that were listed incorrectly in our MLS. I have seen major errors several times – huge mistakes over and over.
For example, I have seen four-bedroom homes listed as three-bedroom homes. The buyers I was showing did not care about that fourth bedroom, but I work with a lot of buyers who demand it. I wonder how many four-bedroom homes I have not shown because the MLS entry listed only three.
Recently I was working with buyers who were seeing everything in a specific neighborhood. We looked at a tri-level with a basement that was listed as a bi-level. Again, I know many agents search by style and often enter “not bi-level” as a parameter. I wonder how many showings that home missed because of the error.
I often see what I think of as an error of omission. Many listings don’t have the school district included. When we put the Parcel Identification Number (PIN) into the MLS system, many fields are auto-populated, including the schools which a student would attend while living at that home. But the district itself does not auto-populate. Entering that data means taking time for only a few extra keystrokes...and how many agents do you think search by school district? Pretty many, I think.
Do your duty
When our listings do not get showings, we encourage the sellers to reduce the price. Is this fair to the sellers if we have (or our office staff has) entered incorrect data? When we take a listing as a seller’s agent, we promise to promote the interests of the seller with the utmost good faith, loyalty and fidelity; in other words, to look out for the seller’s best interests.
Are we truly representing the sellers when we make gross errors? What does that misrepresentation do to our reputation as real estate agents? When any one of us harms our own reputation, we are harming the reputation of all of us, and our industry as a whole.
Here are some tips to make the data entry go more smoothly:
• Tell your seller that the two of you are a team and you appreciate his help in getting correct information.
• Take an MLS entry sheet to the listing presentation and go through it with the seller.
• Once the listing is in the system, ask the seller to review it for errors immediately. It is very easy to e-mail the listing to the seller.
• Fill in as many search parameters as possible.
• Take measurements—if you do not want to take the measurements yourself, ask an appraiser to measure the home. This is not that expensive and many appraisers will measure the home and even provide a floor plan for your marketing efforts. The Aurora Association of REALTORS® has affiliate members who offer this service. (To get the directory of AAR’s Affiliate members, simply visit www.AuroraRealtors.org, and click on the link on the left hand side that says “Affiliates.”)
• Update photos—if you list a property in February or March when there are no leaves on the trees and it is still available after the season has changed, go back and take more photos. Our MLS system makes it so simple to upload photos.
By being more conscientious as listing agents, we can improve our reputations, not only as individual agents but also as an industry as a whole. Let us all take the time to make sure our listings are correct in the MLS system. |
