Estate agencies: the seller wants to know if anyone has viewed the flat

The owner of a flat rings for the third time this month. She asks whether anyone has viewed it and what they said. The agent who picks up knows there have been viewings, but a colleague did them and she is out on the road. He promises to call back. The owner hangs up with the impression that nothing is happening with her flat.

In agencies, lost business is usually discussed from the buyer’s side. This call shows the other side: a seller who doesn’t know what is happening with their property will sign with someone else next time.

An agency works for two sides at once

The seller wants to know that someone is making an effort, and what their property is really worth. The buyer wants not to be offered what they have already turned down. Both depend on the same piece of information: what happened at the viewing.

Most agencies keep decent records of properties, with photos and descriptions, and some record of buyers. What is missing is the link between them: who viewed what, when, and what they made of it.

Every viewing leaves a trace

A viewing is when an agency learns the most and writes down the least. The agent goes from the flat straight to the next appointment and has forgotten half of what they heard by the time they are back at the office.

So the note has to be made on the phone, in the car, in a minute. Not much is needed:

• which property and which buyer
• the impression in one word: interested, maybe or no
• one sentence on what put them off, what they think of the price and what happens next

If it takes longer than that, agents leave it for later, and later never comes. Software that asks for the same thing to go into a diary and into the system doesn’t survive its first month. More on that in People don’t resist new software. They resist doing the job twice.

The note isn’t only for the office. The buyer rings the next day and says “I’ve been thinking about that flat”, and an agent who has done several more viewings since sees on the screen which flat it was and what bothered the buyer. The conversation carries on instead of starting from scratch.

The seller’s report isn’t written, it is assembled

Once viewings are recorded, the report for the seller builds itself from the notes: how many viewings and enquiries there have been, and what buyers most often object to. The agent can send it every fortnight, with no extra work and before the seller rings.

The same overview is the strongest footing when price comes up. “I think the price is high” is easy for a seller to dismiss. When they see that several people have viewed the flat and nearly all mention the same thing, the conversation goes differently. Not because the agent explains it better, but because the seller has a record in front of them instead of an opinion.

The record also helps the agency see where the problem lies. Plenty of viewings without a single offer usually says something about the price or the property itself. Few enquiries for a property that looks good more often says something about the listing: the photos, the description or where it was published. Those are two different conversations with the seller, and it helps to know which one you are having.

A buyer who said no also said why

A “no” after a viewing isn’t the end. A buyer who turned a flat down because of the floor may be exactly the right buyer for a lower-floor flat in the same area. When the reason for saying no is recorded, a new property on the books isn’t just a new listing but a list of people worth calling that same day.

It works the other way too. A buyer shouldn’t be called about a flat they have already seen and rejected. In an agency where each agent keeps their buyers on their own phone, that happens easily, and afterwards the buyer stops taking the agency seriously.

An instruction has an end date

An agency agreement is usually valid for a set period. As the end approaches, the agency needs to know in good time and go into the conversation with the seller with an overview of everything that has been done. An agreement that lapses unnoticed, and isn’t renewed by the seller, is more often the result of silence than of poor work.

What can wait

It doesn’t all have to happen at once. Listings sent to several property portals from one place, commission split between agents, and reports for the agency owner all make sense, but only once what they rest on is in place. That means properties, buyers and viewings linked in one place, and a note that can be entered from a phone.

We design and deliver property, buyer and viewing records linked so that one note serves both seller and buyer, as part of our CRM and ERP systems service, together with a phone app when agents work out on the road. If the call at the start of this article sounds familiar, tell us how you record viewings today.