The #1 Reason Homes Don’t Sell

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It’s easy to come up with a short list of classic seller mistakes that hamper sales: poor property preparation, no pictures, overpricing, sellers that insist on giving guided tours, distinct odors, ill mannered dogs … and so on.

There is, however, one mistake that stands head and shoulders above the rest. And ironically, I’m seeing this issue actually grow in frequency to the point where it’s seriously hampering our ability to sell homes to our buyers.

It’s access. If we can’t get in, we can’t show the house. If we can’t show the house, we can’t sell it. We frequently end up showing less than 6 because we can’t get access to homes on the list. There are two primary reasons:

1. Appointment Only

I understand that in some parts of the country, “Appointment Only” is the only way to access properties. In those locales, sellers and buyer agents are well trained and make it work. In contrast, here in the San Francisco Bay the majority of homes have always had lockboxes and showing instructions have been some variation of, “Call, leave a message, GO, leave a card.”

Once in a while a seller really needs to limit access to their home to specific times. Valid reasons include illness, latch-key kids home by themselves, swing-shift workers sleeping during the day and so on. I do not include dogs, renters or new plasma TVs in this list.

Of all of the listings we’ve done, we’ve only had one “By Appointment Only” – and it was an uncooperative tenant. We work hard to help our sellers understand that buyers need access when it works for THEM, not the seller. With proper instruction, sellers can be educated to understand that access is critical and will subsequently cooperate.

2. No Lockbox

Just a few short years ago, we seldom, if ever, encountered homes without a lockbox. Recently, however, that has changed. We’ve seen a marked increase in properties without lockboxes. And, making a bad situation even worse, no contact information for the sellers. And to add injury to insult: Realtors who don’t answer their phones or respond to emails or texts.

No contact = no showing. No showing = no sale.

As an example, as of this article, Hayward, CA has 281 single family homes on the market. 97 of these do not have a lockbox – a whopping 34.52%. One third of the homes actively on the market. Of the 281 homes, 57 are REOs (20.28%), 109 are “normal” sales (38.79%) and 115 are short sales (40.93%).

100% of the REOs have a lockbox. Of the normal sales, 77% have lockboxes. Out of 115 short sales, however, an astonishing 60.87% DO NOT have a lockbox. And the majority of these also have no contact information for the seller, making it exceedingly difficult to get access.

The very sellers that, by necessity, need to make access the easiest are, in fact, making it almost impossible.

Since short sales represent such a high percentage of the market and typically have the lowest prices, these are the homes buyers are clamoring to see, and can’t, in so many cases. Not only does this hamper sales, it also frustrates buyers (who cannot comprehend the lack of access) and, quite frankly, makes Realtors look like idiots.

In contrast, even though a significant percentage of our listings are short sales, we’ve only had one with no lockbox – ever – it had a Section 8 renter who absolutely refused to cooperate. This was a very specific case, and we now know what to do next time.

Without question the growing lack of access to homes is changing the very fabric of this market.