Living in a home that is for sale

A home on the market is still a home you live in. Meals still get cooked in it. The dog still sheds. What changes is that on some evenings a stranger walks down your hallway, and the days those evenings land on are days you plan around.

Before the first appointment

We walk the home together before it goes live and settle what moves. Preparation is mainly subtraction. Rooms show larger with less in them, so half the furniture in a full room goes to storage and the counters come down to what gets used daily. Personal photographs come off the walls. A buyer standing in a room is trying to picture their own life in it, and a wall of somebody else's makes that harder than it needs to be.

The hour before

There is a short routine before every showing and it is the same one every time. Lights on in every room, including the ones you do not use. Blinds open. Bins out of sight, dishes out of the sink, the bathroom counter cleared, the recycling off the back step. Dogs and cats leave with you, because a buyer who is nervous about a dog does not linger, and lingering is the entire point of a showing.

Scheduling, and saying no

Showings are booked through us, and we hold whatever windows you need held. School pickup. A night shift. The hour the baby naps. Sunday morning. A home that is easy to see sells faster than a home that is hard to see, and that rule bends around a household that still has to function. Where a week gets tight, grouping appointments into one evening moves more buyers through the house and hands you back the rest of the week.

Feedback, and what it means

Agents leave notes after a showing and we send them to you unedited. Some of it stings. A buyer calling the third bedroom small is describing a room you raised a child in. Read enough of them together and a pattern appears, and the pattern is the useful part. One person disliking the paint is an opinion. The same dark hallway coming back again and again is a fact about the house.

Open houses

An open house is a different instrument from a private showing and it does not suit every home. It earns its Sunday where a home sits on a street people already drive, and where the rooms explain themselves without a guide. Where it does not fit, we say so rather than book one for the look of it.

Where to begin

Every household has a rhythm, and the showing schedule gets built around yours. Tell us about the home below and we will walk it before anything is booked.