The showing is the product: what a buyer experiences in the first ten minutes

A buyer does not buy the home you live in. They buy the home they walked through on a Saturday afternoon between two other appointments. That walk-through, from the moment they look for parking to the moment the door closes behind them, is the product. The listing photos got them there. The showing decides whether they write.

The first three minutes happen outside

The experience starts on the street. If a buyer circles the block twice looking for a spot, or has to squeeze past a work van in the driveway, they arrive irritated and the home has to earn back ground before they are inside. If it is a strata, they need to know where visitor parking is and how to get from it to the door, and the agent needs a working fob or a clear plan for the intercom.

Then the approach. The walkway is clear, the porch light works even in daylight, the door opens without a shoulder, the lockbox is where the agent was told it would be. A buyer standing on a step for four minutes while their agent phones for a code is forming an opinion, and it is not about the kitchen.

Light, temperature and air

Every blind open. Every curtain drawn back. Every light on, in every room, including closets and the bathroom over the mirror. A buyer will not walk into a dark room and turn on the light to see if they like it. They will glance in and move on, and that room is now a bedroom they did not see.

Temperature is next. A home that is cold in January or hot in July gives a buyer a physical reason to leave sooner, and they will not know why they felt rushed. Set it for comfort an hour before, not when you leave.

Air is the one sellers notice least, because they live in it. Cooking, pets, damp basements, a bathroom fan that never ran. Open windows for twenty minutes before a showing, then close them so the home is quiet. Do not cover a smell with a spray. A buyer reads a strong air freshener as a question, and most will go looking for the answer.

People, pets and the path

Nobody home. Not in the garage, not in the yard, not "just in the office, ignore me". Buyers will not open a closet in front of the owner, and they will not say to their agent what they actually think. A seller standing in the kitchen costs the showing its honesty.

Pets out of the home, not in a crate in the laundry room. A barking dog behind a door shortens a showing by half and turns the laundry room into a room they never saw. Litter boxes, bowls and beds put away.

Then walk the path a buyer walks. Every room reachable without moving a thing. No bikes across the hallway, no boxes in the walk-in closet, no chair blocking the door to the deck. A buyer follows the path of least resistance. Anything in the way is a room that gets skipped.

Nothing locked that a buyer needs to see. The garage, the storage room, the crawl space hatch, the mechanical room in a suite, the basement suite if there is one. A locked door is a sentence in the buyer's head: what is in there. If a tenant occupies part of the home, the Residential Tenancy Act sets out how notice for entry works, and your agent should schedule showings that respect it so the suite is open and the tenant is not home.

What you control and what the agent controls

You control the state of the home: the light, the heat, the air, the tidiness, the pets, the people, the path, the keys. You control it every day the listing is active, not just on the first weekend. A showing on day twenty deserves the same home as a showing on day one.

The agent controls access and information. The lockbox and its code. The showing instructions on the listing so other agents know how to get in, where to park and what to avoid. The sheet on the counter with the strata documents, the Form B, the depreciation report summary and the Property Disclosure Statement, so a serious buyer leaves with answers instead of questions. The follow-up call to the showing agent afterwards, which is where the real feedback lives.

When a showing goes badly it is almost always one of these two lists, and it is worth knowing which one, because the fix is different.

My routine before an open house

I arrive an hour early. I walk the outside first, as a buyer would, from where they will park to the door. Then I go room to room in order: blinds, lights, heat, windows opened then closed, every door unlocked, every path clear. I run the taps and flush the toilets because visitors will. I put the documents on the counter and the sign-in sheet by the door. Then I stand in the entry and look at what a stranger sees first, and I fix that one thing.

After the open house I tell the seller what visitors said, what they asked, and what they did not look at. That last item is usually the one that needs fixing before the next showing.

Thinking about buying or selling in the Fraser Valley? Message me and we will go through your options.