Monday Miscellany – Open Houses, Autocorrect, Marketing, Ignoring

Monday Miscellany

In an effort to get myself back to a more consistent blogging schedule and to get a bunch of random thoughts out of my head, I’m starting a new weekly post. This Monday Miscellany series will be focused on real estate and life. It’ll be a hodge-podge of things that keep me thinking, but aren’t enough for a blog by themselves. Or perhaps they will help me (or you!) select a topic for a future post.

So for the kickoff Monday Miscellany post, things that are top of my mind:

Open Houses Live. Open houses do not seem to thrive in my area. Often when one is held for a listed home, there are only a few people who stop by and quite often there are none. That is true even when the agent markets online, puts the open house in MLS, delivers flyers to neighbors and puts signs and balloons up. However, I conducted an open house yesterday with minimal notice. It wasn’t scheduled until late Friday. Because the decision to have an open house was made late, I wasn’t able to do the normal marketing (besides putting it in MLS and putting up signs) so I wasn’t anticipating too many buyers would stop by. I was surprised! The first group came right at 1pm when the open house started and potential buyers continued to come until after the formal end time. No offers have been received yet, but there was a lot of traffic, and a lot of interest. So I’m not going to totally write-off Open Houses yet. Note to sellers – you might want your agent to consider holding one!

Autocheck Autocorrect. Here’s another example of why it is really important to always double check texts before you send them. I often use the voice activated function on my phone. This morning I verbally spoke a text message to Siri, then glanced at the text before hitting “send.” It was a real estate related message about various properties. The draft text included the words “excepted offer” and “20 Meatball.” Telling a client to meet at 20 Meatball Street, when there is no such place, would make ME sound like a meatball. It was supposed to say 20 Maple. And saying an offer is excepted doesn’t even make sense and is totally different than saying an accepted offer. This is just another reminder to always check texts and emails before hitting “send.”

Market Everywhere. My own home is on the market for sale. As part of the preparation process, we decided to (well, I decided to) stage one particular dresser as shown in this photo. The only thing on top is an obvious pile of books and a lamp. The books are a shameless attempt to garner interest in my husband’s historical fiction novels. You never know when someone’s eyes will fall on the painting that graces the cover of his newest book, and they will ask about it.  If you don’t put things out there, you’ll definitely fail. If you try whatever you can think of, something will work.

How to ignore people. My morning runs are usually on the streets near my home, and as such, I rarely pass other joggers. This morning, though, I decided to run around the Gooseponds in the center of our town. The path there is quite popular and I passed many people. I always smile and say hello. The responses I received this morning did include some smiles and “hello”s back, but also included the following. One person looked right in my eyes and didn’t say anything, or make any kind of response at all. Before I got to her, another turned around, put her hand above her eyes as though she was searching far off horizons for land. Several dropped their faces to their phone screens. These are all definitely effective tactics to make sure someone won’t talk to you in the future, so if you’d like to ignore someone, practice these tips until perfected!

Have a wonderful week!