No Showings. Now What?

By Kelly DeBrosse | eXp Realty | 23+ years serving Raleigh, Wake & surrounding counties

Before reducing the price, let’s figure out why buyers aren’t coming.

When a home has been on the market for a while and the showings aren’t coming, I think most sellers expect the next conversation with their agent to be about reducing the price. And sometimes that’s exactly where we end up, but I have quite a bit of investigating I want to do before I’m comfortable telling someone that’s the answer.

Especially in the market we’re experiencing right now, where showing activity in some areas and price ranges has become painfully slow. I have sellers who have done everything we’ve asked of them to prepare their homes, we’ve put together beautiful marketing, and we’re still struggling to get buyers through the door. I know how frustrating that is because I’m frustrated right along with them.

The first thing I want to do is make sure we haven’t created a problem ourselves. It sounds basic, but mistakes happen when a property is entered into the MLS, and something as simple as an incorrect field can affect which buyers see the home in their searches. Before we start asking a seller to give up money, I want to make sure the house is actually appearing where and how we intended.

Then I go back and look at the listing online, trying to see it the way a buyer would. What’s the first thing I notice? What stands out? Is there something about the property that might be keeping someone from wanting to make an appointment? Are the photographs telling the story of the house the way they should?

I’ve always placed a tremendous amount of importance on photography, but more photographs don’t necessarily mean better marketing. Some homes need quite a few pictures to properly show everything they offer, while others are better served with fewer. The order matters too. I want someone looking online to understand what makes the house worth seeing, and I don’t want to accidentally give them a reason to move on before they’ve ever walked through the door.

Once I’m satisfied that we’re being presented properly, I start looking much more closely at the competition. And this is where the data can become particularly interesting because just pulling every home in the same price range isn’t going to tell me what I need to know.

Data is incredibly powerful, but you have to separate it out to understand what it’s actually telling you. New construction needs to be considered differently from resale homes. Townhomes aren’t necessarily competing for the same buyers as detached homes. Even something like having the primary bedroom on the main level versus upstairs can change who is interested in a property and what they’re willing to pay for it.

I want to be looking at the homes a buyer would realistically consider instead of ours. Otherwise, I may have a whole lot of data that doesn’t actually answer the question I’m trying to solve.

Then I start comparing the properties themselves. Maybe our house has a beautiful new screened porch with a stone firepit, while a similarly priced home has an older screened porch. How much value is a buyer likely to place on that difference? Maybe our house backs to a road while another backs to protected land. That’s a very different kind of comparison because one is something we can improve and the other isn’t going to change.

I’m looking at the features, condition, location, layout and price and trying to understand what a buyer is actually getting for their money. What does the competition offer that we don’t? What do we offer that they don’t? And are those differences meaningful enough to influence which house someone chooses to see?

One of the most useful things I can investigate is the showing activity on those competing homes.

Let’s say we’ve narrowed our competition to ten reasonably comparable properties. During the past week, there were ten showings among those ten homes. That’s an average of one showing per listing. If our house received two of those showings, we actually captured 20% of the activity. We may be performing better than the competition even though two showings certainly doesn’t feel like much to the seller.

Now imagine those same ten homes received forty showings and ours received none. I’m going to be much more concerned about why buyers are choosing to see the other properties and passing over ours.

And then there’s the possibility that none of those ten homes received a showing. That tells me something entirely different.

Of course, the numbers need context. A brand-new listing may naturally attract more attention than one that’s been available for several weeks. Not every property is equally easy to show, and not every home appeals to exactly the same buyer. But when we separate the information carefully, we can begin to understand whether our listing is being overlooked or whether there simply aren’t many buyers shopping for that type of property right now.

If we determine that buyer activity is practically nonexistent across our competition, my next step is to reconfirm that we’re positioned correctly. I want to look at those homes and ask myself which one I believe is most likely to sell next and why.

That’s where I start considering what we might reasonably change. Is there something we should update, add or remove? Would an incentive make our property more attractive? Is there something about the way we’re presenting it that could be improved? What would turn the dial enough to make our house the one a buyer chooses when that next willing and able buyer comes along?

Then I want to know what it would cost to make that happen and whether it makes financial sense.

We might discover that a relatively inexpensive change could improve our position. We might find an incentive that gives a buyer something they value without costing the seller as much as a substantial price reduction. Or we might conclude that the differences between our home and the competition aren’t things we can reasonably change.

Sometimes, after going through all of that, price really is the only meaningful option left. But I want to understand why.

I’ve often thought that Risk Management would be a pretty appropriate secondary title for what I do. There is very little in real estate that comes with a guarantee, and almost every recommendation involves weighing one risk against another. If I recommend spending $10,000 on an improvement, there’s a risk that buyers won’t value it enough to justify the expense. If I recommend reducing the price, there’s a risk that we’ve given up some of the seller’s proceeds without generating the activity we hoped for. If I recommend holding steady, there’s a risk that we miss a buyer who might have responded to a different price or incentive.

I can’t eliminate those risks, but I can investigate them, explain what I believe the possible outcomes are and help the seller understand what we’re trying to accomplish with each decision.

This market has challenged some of what I’ve learned to expect over more than 23 years in real estate. I’ve seen homes that were properly prepared and presented, where we’ve responded to the information available, and the showing activity still hasn’t materialized. There are situations where I can go through every part of this investigation and still not feel confident telling a seller exactly what will happen if we make another change.

I recently had a seller ask me whether another price reduction would help. I told him I didn’t know.

That’s not an answer I particularly enjoy giving, but it was the truth. I could explain what we’d already learned, what the competition looked like and why a reduction might improve our position. What I couldn’t tell him was that I believed another reduction would definitely bring buyers through the door. I simply didn’t have enough evidence to make that promise.

We discussed it, and he decided he wanted to try the reduction, so that’s what we did.

It’s his home, his money and ultimately his decision. My responsibility is to give him the best information I have, explain what I think and why, and respect the decision he makes. I don’t have to agree with every decision a seller makes, and they certainly don’t have to agree with every recommendation I give them.

One thing I am very careful about, though, is documenting those conversations when a seller chooses a direction different from what I’ve recommended. I’ll circle back in writing to make sure there’s a record of what I advised, what information I based that advice on, what concerns I had and what the seller ultimately decided.

Real estate involves too much money and too many moving parts to rely on everyone’s memory of a conversation weeks or months later. That documentation isn’t about continuing an argument or reminding someone that I disagreed. It’s about making sure we both understand what was decided and why, particularly when the consequences could be significant.

There’s another option that I think deserves more consideration than it sometimes gets, and that’s whether selling right now is even the best decision anymore.

This is one of the reasons I spend so much time asking questions before I ever take a listing. I want to understand why someone is selling, what they need to accomplish, what their financial situation looks like and how much flexibility they actually have. I’m trying to identify the risks before either of us commits the time and money involved in preparing and marketing the house. I don’t want my seller getting stuck in a situation we might have been able to anticipate, and I certainly don’t want to put us both through months of frustration if there wasn’t a reasonable path to the outcome they needed in the first place.

Some people have to sell regardless of what the market is doing. They’ve already purchased another home, they’re relocating, their finances have changed or something in their personal circumstances makes staying where they are impossible. For those sellers, we have to keep working through the available options and determine what gives them the best opportunity to accomplish what they need to do.

Other homeowners have the option of staying put. Maybe they don’t particularly want to, but if selling today means accepting a financial outcome they’re uncomfortable with, we need to consider what it would cost them to remain in the home instead. What are their carrying costs? What would they be giving up by waiting? How long could they reasonably stay? Would making that decision relieve some of the pressure they’re feeling?

When the market began leveling off last year, I think a lot of us believed we were experiencing a seasonal slowdown. We expected activity to improve when the spring selling season arrived, as it traditionally does. And when spring came, there were signs that we might be heading into a stronger market, but the activity we expected barely materialized before it began fading again.

That’s part of why I’m much more cautious now when someone suggests taking their house off the market and trying again in the spring. We thought that was going to be the answer last year, and it wasn’t.

Based on what I’ve been watching, I believe we’re somewhere around 12 to 18 months into a longer market cycle, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that cycle to reverse simply because the calendar changes. When I talk with a seller about waiting, I’m talking about being prepared to remain in the home for a minimum of three years, not a few months.

I can’t tell anyone exactly when values will recover, and I certainly wouldn’t promise that three years will be enough. But if someone has the ability to stay in their home, we need to consider whether that’s a better financial decision than continuing to chase a market that isn’t responding. For someone who has to sell, of course, that’s an entirely different conversation.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is how important it is to change my thinking quickly when the facts and data change. I can’t afford to sit with a seller in their disappointment for so long that I start looking for reasons to tell them what they want to hear. I understand why they’re disappointed, and sometimes I’m just as disappointed as they are, but that doesn’t change what buyers are doing.

When I was a younger agent, I wasn’t nearly as good at separating what was possible from what was probable. Real estate is full of unusual situations, and every once in a while a house sells for a number that nobody expected. Those transactions happen, and when you’ve seen enough of them, it’s easy to start thinking that maybe your seller’s house will be the next one.

The problem is that those are the exceptions. I can’t build my advice around the possibility that we’re going to get lucky. I need to look at what the majority of comparable properties are doing because that’s where I have the strongest evidence of what is likely to happen.

Every once in a while I still walk into a house that’s so exceptional I believe it really could be the one that breaks the mold. Those properties exist, and recognizing them is part of having experience too. But I don’t have the privilege of seeing houses like that every day, every week or even every month. Most homes need to be evaluated against the competition and the buyer behavior we’re actually seeing, not the extraordinary result we hope might happen.

That’s particularly important in a changing market. If I keep holding onto what I believed three months ago simply because I don’t like what the new information is telling me, I’m not doing my seller any favors. I need to be willing to change my recommendation as quickly as the evidence changes, even when that makes for a difficult conversation.

I’ve come to believe that some of the best agents are the ones willing to have those difficult conversations. It’s easy to communicate when everything is going well, the showings are coming and buyers are making offers. It’s considerably harder when you’re sitting across from someone who’s already disappointed and you have to explain that the information you’re looking at doesn’t support what they were hoping for.

I understand that disappointment, and I feel it right along with my sellers. But I can’t linger there with them so long that I lose sight of what the facts are telling me. If I start looking for reasons to support a price or a strategy I no longer believe in, simply because I don’t want to make the conversation any harder, I’m not helping them.

I’ve learned over the years that good communication isn’t measured only by how often you talk to someone. It’s also about being willing to tell them the things they need to know, even when you know those things are going to be difficult to hear. I owe my clients that much, particularly when the decisions we’re making involve tens of thousands of dollars.

So when a home isn’t getting showings, I’m not interested in automatically recommending another price reduction simply because we haven’t had an appointment in a while. I want to know what we’ve investigated, what we’ve learned, what alternatives we’ve considered and why I believe a particular change gives us the best opportunity to move forward.

Sometimes the answer is an improvement, an incentive, a change in how we’re presenting the home or a price adjustment. Sometimes the answer is that we need more time and information. And sometimes, if the seller has the ability to wait, the answer may be that selling right now isn’t the best financial decision.

I can’t guarantee which decision will produce the outcome we want, and after all these years I’m still willing to tell a seller when I don’t know.

What I can do is make sure we’re asking the right questions, looking at the right information and making the best decisions we can with the market that’s actually in front of us.