What New York Sellers Should Know About Managing Showings

Showings are the moment where a buyer’s abstract interest in your listing becomes a concrete experience of your home. Everything you’ve done in preparation – the staging, the photography, the pricing – exists to get buyers through the door. Once they’re there, a different set of decisions affects whether that visit converts to an offer.

The Access Question: Make It Easy

Buyers and their agents schedule showings with a time constraint in mind – they have a window, often 30 to 60 minutes, before the next appointment. A seller who takes two hours to respond to a showing request, or who has a complicated access arrangement that requires lengthy coordination, loses showings to homes that are easier to access.

The standard access arrangement for a listed New York home is a lockbox – a device attached to the door or door knob that contains the key, accessible via a code that the listing agent distributes to showing agents. This allows scheduled showings to proceed without the listing agent or seller needing to be present for every visit.

For sellers who are uncomfortable with unaccompanied access, a showing service or requiring the listing agent to be present for all showings is an option – but understand that this creates friction for busy buyer’s agents and will reduce your showing volume. In competitive markets, friction around access directly reduces offers.

Same-Day Showing Requests

In a hot market, buyer’s agents sometimes request showings with very short notice – sometimes hours. The sellers who accommodate these requests maximize their showing activity; those who require 24-hour notice sometimes miss buyers who are making a same-day decision between two properties.

If you can accommodate short-notice showings, do. Set a reasonable minimum notice – 2 hours rather than 24 – that allows you to prepare without sacrificing spontaneous buyer interest.

What to Do While Buyers Are Touring

Leave. This is the most important and most consistently ignored piece of showing guidance. Sellers who remain in the home during showings – hovering, answering questions directly, commenting on what they love about the kitchen – make buyers profoundly uncomfortable.

Buyers need to be able to speak frankly with their agent. “I don’t like this layout” becomes unsayable when the person who chose the layout is standing five feet away. Buyers who can’t process honestly in person are less likely to make confident offers.

Take the dog. Secure pets or remove them. Pet odor and presence are among the most commonly cited negative factors in buyer feedback.

Leave the home clean, lit, and at a comfortable temperature. Set it up exactly as you would for photography, then leave.

Feedback Loop

After each showing, your agent should follow up with the showing agent for feedback. The patterns in that feedback – multiple buyers mentioning the same concern, consistent positive comments about the same feature – are market intelligence that should inform your approach.

If the feedback is vague or agents aren’t responding, your listing agent should be persistent. Feedback from showings is the most direct signal available about what the market thinks of your home.

I manage the showing process proactively for every listing – from access setup through feedback collection and analysis. Call me at (321) 447-4259 or visit movewithricky.com.

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Rakesh (Ricky) Khanna | Licensed Real Estate Salesperson
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Realty Connect
Call or text: (321) 447-4259 | movewithricky.com